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The Fundamental Principles 

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V 

Catholic Summer and Winter School Library 



THE 

Fundamental Principles 

of 

CHRISTIAN ETHICS 

FIVE LECTURES 



BY Y 

REV. JAS. JOSEPH CONWAY, S.J. 
St. Louis University, St. Louis, Mo. 



CHICAGO 
D. H. McBRIDE & CC . 
1896 



IUL15 HM 
V 



Copyright, 1896 

BY 

H. McBRlDE & CO. 



PREFACE 



mm 

Ml Y first intention, upon concluding 
to publish these lectures, was to 
supplement the necessarily condensed 
matter of the text with a running com- 
mentary in the shape of footnotes. I 
would thus have been enabled to en- 
large upon points which the circum- 
stances attending the delivery of the 
lectures did not permit me to develop 
at length. For there is much in the 
exposition and elucidation of the doc- 
trine, as set forth in the lectures, which 
will appear abstruse, when it is really 
only condensed. The arguments, too, up- 
on which the doctrine rests may at times, 
perhaps, appear unnecessarily profound 
or subtle, because I was not at liberty 
to spend more space and time upon 
their elaboration. The same observa- 
tion is true of the systems of Ethics 
reviewed in these lectures. While I 



8 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



have everywhere, in rehearsing them, 
aimed to render myself free from bias, 
that I might thus present a perfectly 
fair resume of adverse views — and those 
familiar with these matters assure me 
that I have been very careful and with- 
out groundless prejudice — yet I feel 
that much has been lost to the strength 
of my own position and to the cause of 
Christian Ethics by the unavoidably 
close condensation of the ethical theories 
which I have examined, and by the 
brevity of the arguments and of the 
refutation which I have urged against 
them. A commentary, for this reason, 
would have added materially to the 
utility of the lectures. 

Yet while a commentary in the shape 
of footnotes would, I see clearly, have 
compensated for the synoptical charac- 
ter of the text, the extent of such a 
work, were it to meet its demand, de- 
terred me from pursuing it. For the 
fact is, that I began such a commentary 
— which is the reason why these lectures 
did not appear earlier — but the unwar- 
rantable bulk to which the notes, and only 
necessary notes, to the first half of the 



PREFACE. 



7 



first lecture had swollen, convinced me 
that it would at least look better to relin- 
quish my desire to furnish the lectures 
with a commentary. The disproportion 
would have been too awkward. For the 
commentary w T ould have been a larger 
work than the lectures it was meant 
simply to supplement and explain. 

However, it is my hope that even 
without the proposed commentary, these 
lectures will furnish suggestive reading 
matter to every type of ethical student. 
That they are opportune, I will not go 
out of my way to establish. Anything 
and everything touching the moral ex- 
istence of man is always in place and 
time for the study of man. The destiny 
of man upon which the character and 
ground-features of his moral existence 
hinge, carries with it its own interest. 
Moreover, the natural law, conscience, 
the doctrine of right and wrong, human 
responsibility, and the eternal sanction 
of the moral law are at all times vital 
questions. Finally, the present chaotic 
condition of the public mind upon so 
many moral issues, ought to render every 
legitimate endeavor to circulate the 



g CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 

teachings of Catholic philosophy oppor- 
tune and, in proportion to its fitness, 
also welcome. 

Jas. Joseph Conway, S. J. 

St. Louis, Mo., May 1, 1896. . 



CONTENTS 

Page. 



Introduction n 

The Subject-Matter of Ethics, or the 
Aim, Principles and Conditions of the 
Human Act 23 

The Ethical Standard, or The Cri- 
| terion of Good and Bad in Human Ac- 
tions 63 

The Natural Law, or The Primitive 
Grounds of Moral Conduct . . . . 115 

The Tribunal of Conscience, or The 
Individual Arbiter in Moral Conduct . 151 

The Doctrine of Right, or The Ulti- 
mate Source of Man's Juridical Powers 
and Claims 197 

Literature 251 

Analytical Index 261 



(9) 



INTRODUCTION 



q7| S an introduction to the following 
/ brief course of General Ethics, 
permit me to set forth in one or two 
short paragraphs, first, the definition and 
secondly, the subject-matter of Chris- 
tian Ethics. 

Ethics, Moral Philosophy, or the 
Science of Natural Law — all designa- 
tions of the same study — is that science 
of moral rectitude, which is gathered 
from and based upon the principles of 
Natural Reason. It is, first of all, justly 
denominated a science, because it is a 
knowledge acquired from first princi- 
ples. It is, in the second place, prop- 
erly termed the Science of Moral Recti- 
tude; and this for two reasons: primarily, 
because its material object, as we say, 
or subject-matter, is the moral constant, 
the human act; and because, secondly, 
its formal or specifying object is the 

11 



12 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



ordination or correct adjustment of hu- 
man activity to the attainment of man's 
final end, or destiny. Like every other 
department of philosophy, it is of course 
occupied with the pursuit of truth. But, 
differently from other philosophical 
studies, its special aim is practical, not 
speculative truth; that is, it seeks to es- 
tablish and codify the true principles 
upon which human conduct should be 
■ invariably formed and regulated. It is, 
finally, a science based upon principles of 
Natural Reason, to distinguish it, in the 
first instance, from Moral Theology. 
For Moral Theology also deals, like 
Moral Philosophy, with the right adjust- 
ment of human actions to man's final 
end, but, differently from Ethics, it deals 
with this adjustment upon the princi- 
ples of revealed religion and ecclesias- 
tical legislation, rather than upon prin- 
ciples of merely Natural Reason. Ethics 
is, for this reason, distinguished in the 
second place from every form of modern 
moral empiricism. These theories of 
moral science are built exclusively 
upon the laws, customs, traditions, and 
social features of nations, peoples, tribes, 



INTRODUCTION. 



13 



families, and not, accordingly, upon 
reason and the created nature of things. 
Finally, the Science of Ethics is based 
upon Natural Reason, to distinguish it 
from the moral conclusions gathered 
from any feature of exaggerated Ration- 
alism, such as the Moral Purism of 
Kant, the Pessimism of Hartmann and 
Schopenhauer, the Moral iEstheticisni 
of Herbart, and the Caesarisin and 
Moral Pantheism of the Hegelian School 
of Ethical Science. 

Ethics, thus defined as the Science of 
Moral Rectitude upon principles of 
Natural Reason, is divided primarily into 
General Ethics and Special Ethics. 
Special Ethics deals with the moral 
principles underlying the manifold re- 
lations in which man stands to God, to 
himself, to society. These relations 
give rise to, or constitute, what are known 
as the Natural Rights and Duties of 
Man. So that Special Ethics, as a depart- 
ment of the science, treats successively 
of man's duties to God, of man's indi- 
vidual rights and duties, of man's so- 
cial rights and duties. Society, how- 
ever, is fourfold in its species. It is 



14 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



domestic, civil, ecclesiastical and inter- 
national. Hence, Special Social Ethics 
embraces, besides man's duties to God 
and his individual rights and duties, the 
broad sphere of his domestic rights and 
duties, his civil, ecclesiastical and inter- 
national rights and duties. This is a 
vast and interesting field of moral study. 
It comprehends, when it treats of man's 
duty to God, questions of so great mo- 
ment as the possibility, necessity, and 
fact of revelation, the duty of divine 
worship, and the natural obligation 
every man is under of embracing the 
true religion. It establishes, when 
it deals with man's duties to himself, 
the illicitness of suicide, the natural ob- 
ligation of personal veracity, man's nat- 
ural right to his good name and honor, 
the duty of philanthropy, the wicked- 
ness of revenge, the malice of a lie and 
of deliberate scandal, the intrinsic evil 
of homicide, the natural right of self- 
defense, the unlawfulness of dueling. 
It discusses the origin, nature, and 
modes of acquiring property, as against 
the modern errors of Communism, So- 
cialism, Georgism, the natural ground- 



INTROB UCT10N. 



15 



works 01 the oath, the nature of con- 
tracts, the illicitness of usury and the 
natural law governing" the creation 
and receipt of interests, commissions, 
rents, taxes, and a thousand other de- 
tails of man's individual relations. In 
its discussion of man's social rights and 
duties, Special Ethics treats of the 
origin, nature, and kinds of society. It 
therefore discourses of the family or 
domestic society, and in connection 
with the family, it treats of matrimony, 
divorce, polygamy; of the rights and 
duties of the child, of the parent; of the 
servant, of the master; of the relation 
of employers and employees; of strikes, 
riots, anarchy. It examines the origin, 
end and structure of civil society, and, 
subordinately to the study of society, it 
treats of the origin of the supreme civil 
authority, of its subject, of the acquisi- 
tion, loss, or transmission of the supreme 
power; of the relations of the subject 
to the State, that is, it treats of the 
rights, liberties, and duties of labor; of 
liberty of conscience and worship; of 
the liberty of the press, of the rights 
and duties of the State, and of the par- 



16 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



ent in the matter of education. It deals 
with the liberty of association, with se- 
cret societies, corporations, private in- 
stitutions, lotteries, etc. It treats of 
the legislative, executive, and judiciary 
power of the State, and of the various 
kinds of government; of monarchy in 
its various forms; of democracy and the 
representative form of government; of 
tyranny and despotism; of suffrage, of 
the convention, of elections, of women's 
rights, of political corruption. It treats 
of war and peace, of taxes, income, tariff, 
and of a hundred cognate questions. 

But underlying the multitude of 
questions embraced w T ithin the scope of 
Special Ethics, are the principles of 
General Ethics. Special is, in fact, to 
General Ethics as the superstructure is 
to the foundations of the edifice. For 
in all man's relations to God, himself, 
society — that is in the exercise of all 
and each of his manifold rights and 
duties — the one thing everywhere and 
always at issue is the morality of each 
individual act. As a preliminary, there- 
fore, Ethics should establish the leading 
and constitutive principles of the mo- 



INTRODUCTION. 



17 



rality of human actions under any and all 
circumstances. This is the province of 
General Ethics. It is termed general, 
because its subject-matter is the human 
act as affected by that feature — mo- 
rality — which attaches to it universally, 
i. e., under any and all its possible as- 
pects. 

In its treatment of the morality of 
human actions in general, Ethics neces- 
sarily discusses five questions or ethical 
problems : (1) the physical elements and 
conditions of the human act ; (2) the 
standard by which to judge whether an 
action is morally good or morally evil ; 
(3) the Natural Law or the obligation we 
are under to do moral good and to avoid 
moral evil ; (4) the function and au- 
thority of the Conscience or of our 
Practical Reason in the application of 
the Moral Standard and the Natural 
Law to our individual actions ; (5) the 
doctrine of Right and Duty, or the 
moral basis of the juridical relations 
existing between man and man. These 
questions are essential as a foundation of 
Ethical Science. For no action is prop- 
erly understood without a knowledge of 
C E. — 2 



IS 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



its physical elements and th& conditions 
of its existence. Secondly, if we are to 
do morally good actions as against mor- 
ally evil acts, we must be possessed of a 
standard or criterion, by which we may, 
as by a natural instinct or faculty, dis- 
tinguish a good action from an evil action. 
Thirdly, to fully comprehend the phi- 
losophy of a moral action, it is not enough 
to know what is a good action and what, 
a bad one; we require, further, to under- 
stand why and wherefore we must do 
good actions and may not, although free 
agents, do evil actions. Moreover, 
fourthly, in practical life or in the actual 
exercise of human acts, the comprehen- 
sion of the morality of an individual 
action involves a knowledge of the 
human conscience, the ultimate tribunal 
within us which settles the moral char- 
acter of our own individual actions. 
And, finally, since the exercise of man's 
Rights and Duties is nothing but the 
exercise of moral actions in his relations 
with God, himself, and with his fellow- 
man, a complete view of the morality of 
human actions requires that we show 
that all man's Rights, and therefore his 



INTRODUCTION. 



19 



Duties — even his positive Rights and 
Duties — have and must have an imme- 
diate or mediate moral basis. 

Hence, in the present course of Gen- 
eral Ethics, we will, in harmony with 
this universally admitted view, treat 
successively of the elements and condi- 
tions of the human act ; secondly, of 
the Ethical Standard or moral criterion; 
thirdly, of the Natural Law or source of 
moral obligation ; fourthly, of Con- 
science or the domestic, individual rule 
of conduct; and, fifthly, of the moral 
foundation of human Rights and Duties. 

In my treatment of these questions, I 
shall aim mainly at three objects: (1) 
to be as full and as comprehensive as 
possible within the time allotted to me; 
(2) to be as plain and simple as the mat- 
ter will permit, so as to accommodate 
myself to as many as possible, and (3) 
to adopt the didactic, rather than the 
polemic or eclectic method of setting 
forth these eminently necessary truths 
of Christian Ethics. 



Lecture First 



[21] 



THE 

Subject-matter of Ethics 

OR 

The Aim, Principles and Conditions 
of the Human Act 

/CHRISTIAN Ethics rests upon the 
principle and fact of creation. 
From Natural Theology, the Christian 
moralist assumes that this universe of 
things came forth from an all-wise 
and holy God, From Cosmology, he 
recognizes that all things tend towards 
a final end. In virtue, therefore, of 
these truths, it follows that, on the one 
hand, God is the "Alpha and Omega/' 
the First Cause and Last End of all 
things, and that, on the other, the crea- 
tive act cannot remain ineffective. Its 
efficiency must in fact be manifest in 
creatures, and creatures do exhibit, first 
of all, in their several natures, an aptness 
of certain agents for certain ends. There 
is, in the second place, an individual bent 
or active direction and impulse in every 

23 



24 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



created thing in virtue of whieh each, in 
its allotted course and after its ap- 
pointed manner, tends towards the ac- 
complishment of its assigned destiny. 
In virtue, therefore, of the creative act, 
the entire universe, whether distribu- 
tively or collectively considered, is in 
motion at once infinitely varied and 
harmoniously united, towards the end 
appointed by the Creator. This move- 
ment — mechanical, merely vital, or spir- 
itual — is revealed in, and executed 
through, these natural operations by 
means of which creatures attain to their 
respective individual perfections. It is 
not, accordingly, to the same length final 
for every creature. It, therefore, ceases 
for each, where the specific complement 
or perfection of its nature shall have 
been realized.. From the specific nature, 
then, of each creature, we are to gather 
at once the character and the finality of 
the end for which it exists. Not that the 
nature of a thing is the primal or origi- 
nating cause of the movement by which 
each is borne to its destiny, but because 
the nature of a thing is the proximate 
root and created immediate source of 



SUBJECT-MATTER OF ETHICS. 25 



this activity. For every creature is, by 
its very constitution, radically adjusted 
and potentially equipped to attain the 
destiny assigned to it by the Creator. 
Consequently, every act or movement, 
emanating, as it does, from this adjust- 
ment and equipment, is proportionate 
to this nature and to the powers of this 
nature, as the effect is to the proximate 
cause. 

The creature, man, is no exception to 
this fundamental doctrine. As his fel- 
low creatures, so, too, man came forth 
from God as from his First Cause, with 
an end to reach in the exercise of his 
native powers. Like these, therefore, 
he is, perforce of his created existence, 
in motion towards his last end. As, 
again, in creatures, so, too, in man, this 
movement is remotely founded in man's 
nature and proximately carried forward 
by the exercise of man's activity in the 
pursuit of his specific perfection, that is, 
his perfection as a rational being. 
Now, it is the relation existing, proxi- 
mately, between this exercise of man's 
activity and, remotely, between his na- 
ture on the one hand, and his final end 



26 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



or ultimate perfection on the other, 
which constitutes the subject-matter of 
General Ethics. Hence, in setting forth 
the fundamental principles of Ethics, 
the first step we must take is to deter- 
mine accurately the elements of this 
relation. They are evidently two: the 
final end of man, and the human or free 
act which is the natural expression of 
that activity within him, by the exercise 
of which man is to reach his ultimate 
perfection. As, however, the nature of 
the human or free act is determined by 
the principle from which it emanates, 
and the essential conditions under which 
it must be exercised to be truly human 
or free; there are, therefore, three dis- 
tinct conclusions to be ascertained as a 
basis of all ethical teaching. We are, 
first, to determine what is the final end 
or perfection of man; secondly, what is 
the physical principle of human acts; 
and, thirdly, which are the conditions 
under which a human act must be exer- 
cised to be justly reputed ethical. For 
it is impossible to treat ethical princi- 
ples intelligibly, without clear and fixed 
notions of the destiny of man, and of 



SUBJECT-MATTER OF ETHICS. 27 



the act or operation through the life- 
long" exercise of which he is to achieve 
this destiny. 

Let us turn. then, to the first conclu- 
sion, which we must reach, viz.: What 
is the final end of man. And. first of 
all. that as little obscurity as possible 
may attach to the doctrine as we shall 
set it forth, we will enunciate it entirely 
and distinctly in the following propo- 
sition : 

The final end of man is happiness; 
this happiness, however^ cannot he com- 
pletely realized in the possession of any 
.finite good : it is found only in a knowl- 
edge and love qf the Supreme Good, 
which is God. and is therefore attain- 
able perfectly in the next life only, and. 
in this life but incompletely and meri- 
toriously, through the life-long subordi- 
nation of the sensitivo-rational happi- 
ness of the present existence to the pur- 
suit of our perfect happiness in the 
future life. 

This proposition sets forth five dis- 
tinct principles or points of teaching 
upon the destiny of man. It declares: 
(1) that the final end of man is hap- 



28 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



piness; (2) that the object of this hap- 
piness is no finite good, but God, the 
Infinite Good; (3) that we possess this 
Infinite Good through the knowledge 
and love of God; (4) that this knowl- 
edge and love is imperfect in this life, 
perfect only in the next; (5) that the 
end of man in this life is to make sure 
of his everlasting happiness in the next. 

To ascertain the end for which a crea- 
ture was made and the aim of its opera- 
tions, we logically turn, as we intimated 
above, to its nature or, more immedi- 
ately, to the specific tendency of this 
nature. Now, the distinguishing or spe- 
cific tendency of human nature is ex- 
hibited in the rational appetite, or the 
will in man. Being his rational tend- 
ency, this appetite is, therefore, supreme 
and holds his other inclinations in con- 
trol and subordination. From his will, 
therefore, as from his supreme and spe- 
cific inclination, we determine what is 
the final end of man. And, first of all, 
man's final end must evidently be that 
which ultimately and completely fulfills 
this inclination. On the other hand, 
nothing permanently and fully rests the 



SUBJECT-MATTER OF ETHICS. 29 

will but the lasting possession of that 
which the mind apprehends as the good 
of the will, and, therefore, of the nature 
of the whole man. Goodness or ;i The 
Good " is, in the first place, the natural 
object of the will. In the second place, 
it is " The Good " in so far as it is pre- 
sented by the mind to the will. For, 
as the adage quite philosophically puts 
it, "we never love or desire the un- 
bnovm" Moreover, and in the third 
place, as an inclination remains unsatis- 
fied, and the will, therefore, which is 
man's specific inclination, is at unrest 
until lastingly united to the true object 
of its appetite or desire; the lasting pos- 
session of that which the mind appre- 
hends as its good, is essential to the 
entire satisfaction of the will. From 
these principles we gather that the final 
end of the human will is the possession 
of that which is presented to it by the 
mind as its complete good; and that, 
therefore, the final aim of human na- 
ture is happiness. For happiness, to 
define it with St. Thomas, is " the 
possession of the perfect and suffi- 
cient good exchuling o.ll evil and fid- 



30 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



filling every desire." The will, on the 
other hand, inasmuch as it is a natural 
inclination towards all good, or "The 
Good " as its term, will necessarily re- 
main unsatisfied until it shall have at- 
tained to this perfect and sufficient 
good excluding all evil and fulfilling 
every desire. The will, then, is made 
for happiness. But, as we have already 
noted, it is at the same time the supreme 
expression of man's natural expansion, 
or final inclination. Hence, it follows 
that the ultimate end of man is happi- 
ness. This was the first principle set 
forth in our doctrinal proposition on the 
end of man. 

But as I have intimated, if not dis- 
tinctly stated, happiness is a condition, 
a state growing out of the possession by 
man of that good which perfectly and 
sufficiently satisfies him. Now, what is 
this good which so rounds up man's de- 
sires as to realize this condition and ulti- 
mately induce this state of human nature ? 
Good, we understand, is and in its final 
division can be but of two kinds, the 
finite good and the infinite good. Now, 
it is not denied here that finite good 



SUBJECT-MATTER OF ETHICS. 31 

contributes to man's happiness. We 
claim even that, inchoatively at least, 
man's happiness does depend in some 
degree upon finite good. But that which 
Christian Ethics insists upon is that no 
finite good is adequate to man's perfect, 
final happiness. Of this fact there can 
hardly remain any doubt when we ob- 
serve, on the one hand, the essentials of 
a completely beatifying good, and on 
the other, we note the absence of these 
essentials in any finite good or sum of 
finite goods. 

A completely beatifying good must 
be: (1) absolute, not relative, in its ex- 
cellence, that is, it must be sought for 
its own sake and not in view of a fur- 
ther good ; it must (2) be adequate in 
its excellence, that is, it must leave noth- 
ing to desire ; it must (3) be immutable 
in this same excellence, inasmuch as it 
must never fail for any external cause 
whatever, or undergo any internal vicissi- 
tude. Now, no finite good exhibits all 
these essentials. For, to review them, 
we distinguish finite goods into three 
classes; the goods of fortune, corporal 
goods, and spiritual goods. The goods, 



82 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



certainly, of fortune — riches, honors, 
dignities, power, friendship — are not 
sought for the passing excellence in 
them, but finally for the good that will 
accrue through them either to the mind 
or to the body or to both. Moreover, 
the possession of these goods leaves 
much to be desired which far more 
than these conduces to the good of body 
and mind, while, in a word, there is 
nothing so unstable and fickle as for- 
tune. Corporal goods — life, health, 
vigor, strength, beauty, and sensitive 
delights — are, manifestly, inadequate as 
a completely beatifying principle. They 
are in themselves an inferior expression 
of good, and are, further, real goods of 
man only in so far as they are subordi- 
nate to and promote his higher or intel- 
lectual excellence. And were they even 
absolute and adequate principles of hap- 
piness, they would surely fail in stability. 
Nothing is more uncertain than the things 
of the body and the goods of sense. 
The only finite goods which, at first, 
would appear to guarantee complete 
human happiness are those of the soul; 
knowledge, wisdom, virtue and the gifts 



SUBJECT-MATTER OF ETHICS. 



33 



of grace — in a word, to be endowed 
with a spiritual nature and the accidents 
of a spiritual nature. But let me say, 
that to be endowed with a spirit- 
ual nature is not, alone, a sufficient 
good. Man requires, further, faculties. 
Faculties, however, which would re- 
main inactive, were an evil or at 
least a deformity. And yet the mere 
exercise of even our sublimest fac- 
ulties is but a means to an ulterior 
good, either in the natural order, as 
knowledge, science, wisdom, or in the 
supernatural order, as grace, virtue, 
merit; while these, again — some of them, 
or all of them — exhibit no absolute and 
adequate excellence. Thus, knowledge, 
science, wisdom, are but habits or states 
of the mind in the pursuit and develop- 
ment of intellectual good, and, accord- 
ingly, as perfections of the mind, they 
are but limited goods. Faith, grace, 
virtue, merit, deal indeed with the ab- 
solute and wholly adequate good; but 
only as an infused and obscure knowl- 
edge of it, as a disposition for its posses- 
sion, as a struggle after it, as a certain 
claim upon it, not as the actual pos- 

C. E. — 3 



34 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



session of its all-quieting excellence. 
Hence, it follows that no finite good, 
be its order ever so superior, can con- 
stitute the object of human happiness. 
But the same conclusion is equally true 
of the sum of finite goods. For the ca- 
pacity of finite goods to perfectly ex- 
haust the human craving for happiness 
is not their quantity. It is their qual- 
ity. Now, their sum will not change 
their quality. They still remain finite; 
and, remaining finite, continue to subsist 
as relative, inadequate, unstable princi- 
ples and objects of human happiness. 

The Infinite Good is, therefore, the true 
object of man's happiness. This fol- 
lows not simply from the exclusion of 
the finite good; but, further, both from 
the innate constitution of rational nature 
for the attainment of the Infinite Good, 
and from the graded final order of crea- 
tion. Man is made for the infinite. His 
mind is a capacity for "The All-True" 
his will for " The All-Good." Now, 
" The All-Good " is not concreted in 
any real object outside the Infinite any 
more than "The All-True." It could not 
be and not, at the same time, constitute 



SUBJECT-MATTER OF ETHICS. 35 

such object infinite. Consequently, the 
natural, finally quieting, and wholly per- 
fecting, object of the human will is the 
Infinite Good, in the same manner that 
the natural, finally resting, and com- 
pleting object of the human mind is the 
Infinite Truth. On the other hand, the 
final end of all creatures is God, the 
character of the tendency in each towards 
Him being determined by its nature 
and its grade in the scale of being. For 
the nature and grade in being of a 
creature defines the final perfection it 
has been ordained to reach, and in the 
attainment of which it exhausts its sub- 
jective and final tendency. Hence the 
manifold ascending series we observe 
in creatures, indicating so many corre- 
responding grades of perfection and 
orders of final tendencies. Now, man 
is at the summit of created things, and 
his perfection is the complete satisfac- 
tion of an infinite appetite for good. 
His final subjective tendency, therefore, 
cannot be completely satisfied, but by 
an object, a Good, in which is realized 
all that is good, cannot, accordingly, be 
finally set at rest, but by the Infinite 



36 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



Good. Hence, as we stated in the sec- 
ond part of the proposition we are 
evolving, the object of human happi- 
ness is no finite good. It is, therefore, 
God, the Infinite Good. 

However, it can have escaped nobody 
that man, to be happy, must be united 
to the object of his happiness. In fact, 
that this must be so, offers no difficulty. 
It is the nature, rather, of this union 
with which we are concerned. How, 
then, is man to be united to the Infi- 
nite Good? One thing we understand 
clearly in advance. He is certainly to 
be united to it in a manner in keeping 
with man's nature, and, therefore, after 
a manner which is within the capacity of 
his specific faculties: his reason and his 
will. Hence, this union is to be by no 
physical comprehension of the Infinite 
Good; inasmuch as man's nature and 
man's faculties, being physically finite, 
are incapable of containing the infinite 
physically. Moreover, since this union 
is to be effected through the specific 
faculties of man, it is, therefore, a pos- 
session of the Infinite Good, or God, to 
be secured through the knowledge and 



SUBJECT-MATTER OF ETHICS. 



37 



love of God or through the acts of these 
two faculties. And this for two reasons. 
It is, first, by knowledge and love of it, 
that man comes, primarily and princi- 
pally, into possession of any and all his 
rational and specific goods; secondly, 
knowledge and love constitute not sim- 
ply the exercise, but the highest exer- 
cise of man's faculties or activities; and 
it is by the exercise of his noblest activ- 
ity upon the noblest object of his ac- 
tivity that man realizes his specific per- 
fection, and ultimately exhausts the 
final tendencies of his nature. How- 
ever, while man is united to God by 
knowledge and love, this is effected pri- 
marily and principally by knowledge, 
and dependency, although concomit- 
antly, by love or by the fruition of the 
Infinite Good which the intellect reveals 
.to the will. This is the nature of the 
will. Of itself, the will is blind, that 
is, it is not fashioned to know, but rather 
to wish, that is, to seek what is known. 
It follows, and, in its action, is propor- 
tionate to the action of the mind. Fi- 
nally, the knowledge itself through 
which we come into possession of the 



38 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



infinite, may, following the duplex ac- 
tivity of the intellect, be either discur- 
sive or intuitive. For all knowledge is 
either intuitive or discursive, that is, 
attained to by reasoning. 

Now, looking at him as he is now sit- 
uated, that is, viewing man in the order 
of the destiny in which he has been from 
his creation constituted — the supernat- 
ural — the knowledge by which man is to 
be united to God in an absolutely perfect 
happiness, will be intuitive not discursive. 
For, that man's ultimate happiness be 
supreme in the order of his supernatural 
destiny. — in which the immediate vision 
of the Divine Essence is his supernatural 
and only final end — his knowledge of the 
Infinite Good, upon which this happi- 
ness depends as upon an intrinsic condi- 
tion, must be the most perfect exercise 
of the most perfect faculty, acting in the 
most perfect manner, upon the most per- 
fect object of that faculty. Now, this 
most perfect exercise of the speculative 
intellect is the intuitive vision, not the 
discursive cognition of the Divine Sub- 
stance. Accordingly, the knowledge of 
God, the Infinite Good, upon which that 



SUBJECT-MATTER OF ETHICS. 39 

happiness depends which is to perfectly 
and sufficiently exhaust man's appetite 
for good in the present order of Divine 
Providence, is the intuitive vision of the 
Divine Substance. 

In Moral Science, however, man is 
considered not relatively to his present 
situation or to the order of his actual des- 
tiny, but absolutely. In Ethics we take 
account of that only which is part and 
parcel of nature alone in man. We are 
forced, therefore, to prescind entirely 
from the supernatural, although it has 
always been the de facto feature of man's 
destiny. Moral Philosophy is founded 
upon the study of man's nature in its 
normal environment and as possessed of 
that only which belongs to it as simply 
human nature. It, therefore, deals with 
man as if he existed in the state of pure 
nature. To view him from any other 
station would be to introduce Revela- 
tion into Ethics, and to thus eliminate 
the rational basis of Moral Science. 

Well, now, in the purely natural order 
man is not, or more correctly, — since he 
never existed in the state of pure nature 
— would not be destined to the imme- 



40 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



diate vision of the Divine Essence. In 
this purely natural order, his destiny 
would be a natural blessedness resting 
upon a knowledge of God as He is re- 
vealed to us in the creatures which He 
has made, and upon a love of God pro- 
portioned to this knowledge. Such 
knowledge would be discursive not in- 
tuitive; and while, relatively considered, 
that is, in view of a supernatural or in- 
tuitive cognition, it would indeed be 
imperfect, yet, studied independently 
and within the sphere of the natural 
order to which it belongs, it is, or would 
be, a perfect knowledge. It would not 
be an intuitive vision of God, inasmuch 
as an intuitive vision of God is not nat- 
ural to any created intellect, not even 
to the angelic. For there is no power 
in created intelligence to compass such 
knowledge, nor, on the other hand, is 
there any exigency of this vision, grow- 
ing out of the destiny of man's nature. 
Yet within the sphere of the natural, 
this discursive knowledge of God would 
be perfect, inasmuch as it would cor- 
respond to and be so accommodated to 
the native powers of human intelligence 



SUBJECT-MATTER OF ETHICS. 41 



as to completely exhaust their natural 
capacity for knowledge. The knowl- 
edge, accordingly, through which man 
comes or would, in the purely natural 
order, come into the natural possession 
of God, the Infinite Good, is not intui- 
tive but discursive, and with the love of 
God which is founded upon it and is 
proportioned to it, it is perfect within 
the sphere of the natural order. 

Now, it is evident that a perfect hap- 
piness of even this natural order is im- 
possible in this life, either as a fact or 
as a principle. Why, the very basis 
and postulate of perfect happiness — the 
indefectibility of life itself — is wanting 
in this life. Nothing ceases with so 
appalling a regularity as man's exist- 
ence in the present life. On the other 
hand, the necessary conditions of per- 
fect happiness are impossible here, even 
apart from the transitory character of 
the existence itself. Perfect happiness 
involves absolute freedom from moral 
drawbacks. And this is impossible in a 
world of ignorance, concupiscence, pas- 
sion, temptation, sin. Perfect happi- 
ness, again, is incompatible with phys- 



42 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



ical ills. And physical ailment seems 
to be the daily experience of mortals. 
Perfect happiness is, once more, an im- 
mutable condition of the whole man; 
whereas, of a fact, everything in man is 
subject here to ceaseless and compli- 
cated changes. Perfect happiness 
finally rests, as we have seen, upon the 
perfect knowledge and love of God, a 
fact which alone goes all the way to 
exhibit its impossibility in this life, 
where all our knowledge of God is im- 
perfect, attained, as it is, by negative, 
rather than by positive, conclusions. 
For it arises from the study of contin- 
gent things; whence, through the remo- 
tion, by reflective elimination, of what 
is defective in the perfections we ob- 
serve in these limited creatures, and by 
the subsequent predication, in their un- 
limited sum and excellence, of these 
purified perfections, we find in crea- 
tures, of the Creator Himself, we arrive 
at an abstract, mediate and analogical 
knowledge of God. 

And yet, if, as this fourth conclusion 
in the proposition we are establishing 
goes to show, perfect happiness is im- 



SUBJECT-MATTER OF ETHICS. 



43 



possible in this life, we naturally seek 
to know why then are we here. What 
is the end of man in this life? The 
end evidently must be the same in this 
life as it is in the next. For as man, ac- 
cording to the totality of his nature, 
tends, whatever his partial and minor 
inclinations, towards that which is sim- 
ply, that is, all things considered, his 
last end, so, too, according to the total- 
ity of his duration, howsoever diverse 
may be the aims of certain periods of 
it, man's existence, as a whole thing, has 
but one, not a multiple, end. He has 
not, therefore, one end to reach in this 
life, and another to attain to in the 
next. In this as well as in the next life, 
there is but one final end appointed for 
man — the knowledge and love of God — 
with regard to which he exists during the 
totality of his duration, in two states, the 
one a future state of possession or loss, 
the other, the present state of tendency 
and meritorious acquisition. Hence, 
the end of man which is assigned to his 
present life as distinct from his future 
state, is the prosecution of his ultimate 
happiness in the next life. There is, in- 



44 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



deed, a sensitivo-rational happiness nat- 
ural to man in this life, and proposed 
by his Creator for the enjoyment of 
man. It is the fruition of the goods of 
this time and the exercise of man's ra- 
tional, sensitive, and even vegetative 
functions upon their proper objects, and 
for their respective perfections, and for 
the fulfillment of their several final, 
although subordinate, tendencies. Yet 
when we observe that man's nature is a 
unit, the sensitivo-rational happiness of 
this life, must, of its very nature, com- 
prehend no indulgence, in the goods of 
this life, nor any exercise, nor any use 
of mental or corporal faculties, which is 
not positively subordinated to man's 
last end — the possession of God in the 
next life. In virtue of this unity of his 
nature and the absolute finality of his 
specific tendency, man can positively 
have but one final good, either in this 
life or in the next; so that if, therefore, 
he is by his sensitivo-rational composi- 
tion ordained to find happiness in finite, 
mundane, sensitive goods, it is only 
in as far as the use and enjoyment of them 
is positively subordinated to the prose- 



subject-matter of ethics. 45 

cution of his final end, the possession of 
the infinite excellence of the Divine 
Goodness. From the truth of which we 
now, by way of conclusion, gather the 
entire ground principle of Christian 
Ethics touching the final end of man 
and the ultimate aim of human activity, 
as set forth in the proposition, whose 
five clauses we have just evolved, viz.: 
The final end of man is a happiness, 
which cannot be realized in any finite 
good, consisting, as it does, in a knowl- 
edge and love of the Supreme Good, 
which is attainable perfectly, indeed, in 
the next life, but, in the present, incom- 
pletely only and meritoriously, through 
the life-long subordination of the sensi- 
tivo-rational happiness of this life to the 
prosecution of the endless happiness of 
the next life. 

Man cannot, however, attain to this 
final good except, as we outlined above, 
through a life-long exertion of his ac- 
tivity in pursuit of it. On the other 
hand, man is endowed with a multiple 
activity. What feature or form of this 
activity, we now naturally inquire, has 
a direct reference to man's final end? 



46 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



For it is this activity, or, more immedi- 
ately, the actions emanating from this 
activity upon which, in detail, all eth- 
ical discussion and theories of morality 
turn. They are, in fact, for this reason, 
called ethical or moral acts — the Greek 
and Latin nomenclature for the same 
idea — because, of all man's actions, 
these, in particular, exhibit his customs, 
manners, ways, conduct, in as far as all 
these are created and shaped by his 
attitude towards his final good and 
towards all things that are connected 
with it in their combined and varied in- 
fluence upon man's sensitive and ra- 
tional nature. 

Omitting, therefore, the merely phys- 
ical and locomotive forces in his com- 
position, the activity of man is threefold; 
vegetative, sensitive and rational. Of 
these, it must be evident that the activ- 
ity which places man in communication 
with his specifying end, the Infinite 
Good, is the same which thereby dis- 
tinguishes him from other living beings 
and makes him what he is — man. This 
is, without dispute, his rational activity. 
His other faculties do, indeed, subserve 



SUBJECT-MATTER OF ETHICS. 47 



the same final end, but only in so far as 
they are positively subordinated to the 
control of this rational activity. Man's 
rational activity is, however, mental 
and volitional. From which form, then, 
of this dual activity do those actions pro- 
ceed by which man's attitude towards his 
final end is actually and habitually 
shaped and defined? That the answer 
to this point may be more scientifically 
stated and more conveniently retained, 
we state it in the following doctrinal 
proposition, that, viz.: 

Inasmuch as his free will exer- 
cises supreme dominion over all the other 
faculties in man, it therefore constitutes 
the distinctive principle from which all 
his moral acts proceed. 

In this proposition we have a doctrine 
enunciated and the grounds upon which 
it is advanced succinctly set forth. 
The doctrine is that, the free will in 
man is the efficient principle of moral 
acts. This is evident (1) from the rela- 
tion of man's will to his last end; (2) 
from its identity with his final and spe- 
cific inclination; and (3) from the native 
ordination of the will towards good. 



48 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



For, in the first place, man certainly will 
never arrive unto his last end, unless he 
will it — unless, that is, he freely per- 
form those actions to the persevering 
exercise of which man's ultimate hap- 
piness is finally attached. Inasmuch, 
therefore, as he is the efficient, created 
cause of his ultimate happiness, he is, 
for this reason, the efficient principle of 
those acts upon which this happiness 
ultimately depends. These acts are the 
acts of his free will. And, again, 
man's free will is the expression of his 
natural or specific tendency, being 
the supreme appetite of his . rational or 
specific nature. It is, then, the active 
source of those endeavors or acts put 
forth by man during life in quest of 
that which he apprehends to be the ob- 
ject of this tendency, that is, his real 
or apparent good. Finally, it is, as we 
have shown, the will in man which has 
the good — the infinite, all-good — as its 
aim. The will, then, is the source of 
those acts by which the good is lost or 
gained. 

However, admitting, as experience 
forces us to admit, that, on the one 



SUBJECT-MATTER OF ETHICS. 49 

hand, every faculty and activity in man 
seeks, in its own way and within its 
own sphere, the perfection or good for 
which it was ordained; and, on the other, 
admitting the unity of nature which lies 
back of every diversity of pursuit and 
activity in man ; we understand that 
there is necessarily a subordination in 
these activities, and, for the same reason, 
a supremacy of one over all the other 
faculties — a ruling power at whose dic- 
tate all other faculties act or do not act, 
act one way and not another, act the 
good or act the evil. This faculty is 
the will. The individual experience of 
mankind asserts its supremacy. For 
the record of each one's actions will 
amply establish the fact that the final 
motive, which in every instance deter- 
mined us to act or not to act, was be- 
cause we so willed it; which decided us 
to act one way and not another was, 
again, because we so willed it; which, 
finally, induced us to act well and not 
ill, or ill and not well, was always be- 
cause we so willed it. But not only is 
this our universal experience; it is, fur- 
ther, an experience founded in the very 

C. E. — i 



50 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



nature of our determination to act. Our 
motive for acting or not acting, for act- 
ing thus or otherwise, for acting well or 
acting ill, is the good which really or 
apparently accrues to us from the action. 
Good, accordingly, is the motive prin- 
ciple of our acts. But, now, the faculty 
to which good as a motive appeals, is 
that of the free will. The free will, 
then, in man, is the source of those acts 
whose motive cause is the good that will 
result from their exercise. Hence, 
reason, equally with experience, estab- 
lishes the supremacy of the will over 
all our other faculties, placing it, accord- 
ingly, by the very nature of its freely 
inhibiting or freely permitting control, 
in command, not simply of its own acts, 
but, further, of the actions of all our 
other faculties. It becomes, thereby, 
responsible for their morality, that is, 
their adjustment or non-adjustment to 
the pursuit of man's final end, the Infi- 
nite Good. Hence, it follows, that as 
we stated in the proposition in which 
we summed up this reasoning, that In- 
asmuch as his free will exercises sur 
preme dominion over all the other fac- 



S UBJECT-MA TTER OF ETHICS. 51 



idties in man, it constitutes the distinc- 
tive principle f rom "'/rich all his moral 
acts ph ysically proceed. 

It must, however, be observed that 
the free will is not the principle of 
moral action, under every and any con- 
dition of its activity. It must be sup- 
posed to act under normal conditions. 
This is a fundamental hypothesis in the 
exertion of any force, natural or artifi- 
cial, free or necessary. For, otherwise, 
it would be, for the end in view, ren- 
dered practically out of proportion. 
The conditions, therefore, of its exist- 
ence must enter into the moral consid- 
eration of the human act. Now, looked 
at singly, the normal conditions of 
human activity may, indeed, vary for the 
will of every individual, and with the 
intrinsic and extrinsic circumstances 
surrounding the exercise of its several 
acts. Considering, however, the funda- 
mental relations of the will, these con- 
ditions may be satisfactorily classified. 
For the will, although supreme in man, 
cannot, in view of the singleness of 
man's nature and the evident harmony 
of its diverse forces, exert itself inde- 



52 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



pendently and regardlessly of its fellow 
activities. In point of fact, some of 
these, as its own acquired or inherited 
habits, constitute with the will itself an 
integral principle of voluntary action. 
Others, as the direction and knowledge 
afforded by the reason, the influence 
exerted by passion over our volitions 
and the part which violence may play 
in the determination of the will, are more 
or less extrinsic conditions under which 
the will must always act. Hence, that 
the free will of man may act normally, 
or that its actions may emanate from it 
in such a manner as to be truly moral 
or human acts, that is, voluntary and 
free acts; they must proceed from the 
will unhampered by its habits, properly 
enlightened by reason, free from the 
control of passion, and uncoerced by ex- 
ternal violence. Experience will here, 
of course, suggest to everybody that it 
is not every relation of the will to these 
conditions which renders a man's action 
involuntary or takes away its freedom. 
To define, therefore, those relations 
which, under these conditions, do elim- 
inate the moral or human character of 



SUBJECT-MATTER OF ETHICS. 



53 



an act. we subjoin this third doctrinal 
and fundamental proposition in which 
are summed up the physical conditions 
of the human act. 

Although the influx of no habit can 
invalidate the voluntary character or 
freedom of the wilVs action; yet vio- 
lence, if it is extreme, will render the 
imperate acts of the will involuntary ; 
whereas fear, if it is so absolute, or pas- 
sion, if it is so unbridled, as to destroy 
the use of reason, or ignorance, if it is 
simply invincible, will render even the 
elicited acts of the will involuntary or 
at least destroy their f reedom, 

A habit is an abiding inclination su- 
peradded to the native faculty inclining 
it to reproduce the same specific acts. 
All habits, therefore, of the will leave 
the voluntary and free exercise of its 
activity intact. For this inclination of 
the will to act is. if we ignore, as we do 
in Ethics, infused habits, such as super- 
natural faith, hope, and charity, is both 
in its origin and its exercise, dependent 
entirely upon the will. It is, in the 
first place, acquired to the will by a 
repetition, on the part of the will, of 



54 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



single acts, and, secondly, its use is 
nothing but the determination of the 
will to freely repeat another of those 
acts by which the habit was acquired. 
If, then, habit exerts any influence upon 
the act — and it certainly does — it is to 
make it more voluntary by intensifying 
its two constituent elements, that is, by 
presenting the good intended more viv- 
idly and by increasing the propensity of 
the will towards it. But it never de- 
stroys the freedom of volition, inasmuch 
as the act is always free, if not directly 
or in itself, at least indirectly or in its 
cause, the freely acquired habit of such 
acts. 

Violence, on the contrary, w T ill render 
an act involuntary and take away its 
freedom. But it effects this with an 
imperate act only, as it is called, not 
with one elicited by the will itself. 
The distinction is this, that an imperate 
act is one not exerted by the will, but 
physically exerted by some one of the 
other faculties, and only commanded by 
the will; whereas, an elicited act of the 
will is one that is not only ordered by 
the will, but, furthermore, physically 



SUBJECT-MATTER OF ETHICS. 



55 



executed by the will itself. As now, 
an imperate act is voluntary and free 
only in as far as it is, when exerted, 
under the orders and at the free dictate 
of the will, it follows that, if it is ex- 
erted at the dictate of a violence so ex- 
treme as to place it entirely beyond any 
control of the will, it is, thereby, in no 
sense an act of the will, but rather an 
act reducible to the violent or involun- 
tary principle which necessitated its ex- 
ertion. For an act cannot proceed at 
the same time from contradictory 
sources. If, then, it emanates from an 
involuntary source — violence — it cannot 
at the same time issue from a cause 
which freely willed it. Violence can, 
of course, affect only the imperate acts 
of the will, that is, the acts of the other 
faculties under the command of the will, 
but not the elicited acts or those acts of 
the will which are not only commanded 
but also exerted by the will. For an 
act cannot proceed from a principle ex- 
erting violence upon the will, without 
assuming an absurdity, viz., that an act 
can be exerted by two contradictory 
principles at the same time. On such 



56 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



an assumption, it would proceed from 
the will, because it is the elicited act of 
the will, and it would be simultaneously 
elicited by the violent principle, because 
it is produced by violence. This is a 
contradiction in terms, and impossible 
inasmuch as the same act would be and 
would not be at the same time elicited 
by the will, and it would be and would 
not be elicited by the principle of vio- 
lence. Violence can, it is true, destroy 
the voluntary agent, and, therefore, the 
will, which is but one of his faculties. 
But it cannot make an act which is 
elicited by the will not be elicited by 
the will. This is the contradiction in 
terms. On the other hand, however, a 
fear so mortal, or a passion so absorbing 
that they physically unsettle the reason; 
or, again, an ignorance so invincible 
that any knowledge of the aim or object 
of the will's action is hopeless, render 
even the elicited act of the will, in so 
far as it is exerted through fear, pas- 
sion or ignorance, an involuntary act. 
Such actions are, as we say, a man's ac- 
tions, because they are performed by a 
human being, but they are not human 



SUBJECT-MA TTER OF ETHIi > . 57 



acts, since they do not proceed from 
man as a human being. 

To emanate from man as a human 
being, an action must not only be elic- 
ited by the will but man must know 
what he is about when he is exerting 
this act of his will. If, now, fear or pas- 
sion destroy his capacity to know what 
he is doing, or invincible ignorance 
renders it impossible for him to act with 
such knowledge, his action does not 
possess the two elements which render 
it human, moral or strictly voluntary, 
much less free. For a voluntary or 
human act is the tendency of the will 
towards an object or end in the measure 
that it is known to him who wills it. 
For the will in man is a rational appe- 
tite, that is, under the guidance or con- 
trol of reason and knowledge. If. then, 
reason is destroyed and knowledge 
hopeless, the action proceeding from the 
will is still indeed the appetite or act 
of man's will, but it is not rational, that 
is, it does not proceed from the will in 
its normal condition of a human will. In 
consequence, while the act is the act of 
a man, it is not a human act. From all 



58 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



of which we can conclude that to be a 
normal principle of human activity, the 
will, be its habits what they may, must 
be free from at least extreme violence, 
independent of a fear or passion which 
physically unsettles the reason, and not 
the victim of an invincible ignorance, 
touching the end or object of its activity. 
Acting under these conditions, the will 
of man exercises moral or human acts. 
It is these human acts; voluntary, 
free acts, exempt from absolute vio- 
lence, not resulting from an invincible 
ignorance, nor prompted by a fear or 
passion which dethrones reason; it is 
these acts, I say, considered in relation 
to man's ultimate perfection or final end, 
which constitute the subject-matter of 
Ethics. Those human acts which pro- 
mote this ultimate perfection, or — which 
is the same thing — place man in a con- 
dition here in this life to secure the pos- 
session of the object of this happiness, 
his final end, or God, the Infinite Good, 
in the next life, we term morally good 
acts. Those, on the contrary, which 
jeopardize this final end and fail to pro- 
mote man's true happiness in this life 



SUBJECT-MATTER OF ETHICS. 59 

and in the next', we call morally bad 
acts. The problem now before us, and 
upon which we shall discourse in the fol- 
lowing lecture is this: How shall we 
know which human acts promote man's 
final end, which human acts fail to do so; 
or, formulating the same question differ- 
ently, by what principle shall we deter- 
mine when an act is morally good, when 
it is morally bad? We shall know this, 
we answer, from the Ethical Standard or 
Criterion of Good and Bad in human 
action. The discussion of this standard 
will constitute the subject of our next 
lecture. 



Lecture Second 



61 



The Ethical Standard 

OR 

The Criterion o£ Good and Bad in 
Human Actions 

mm 

Sp^HAT there are morally good actions 
and morally bad actions, calls for 
no comment, needs no proof. More- 
over, morally good acts are for man 
surely operative of his last end, morally 
evil acts are as certainly an obstacle to 
its ultimate acquisition. Now, since 
man must, to quiet his inborn appetite 
for perfect happiness, attain to its object, 
his final end, the knowledge and love 
of God; it is to his interest to perform 
morally good actions and to avoid mor- 
ally evil acts. It is vitally imperative, 
then, that he know a morally good act 
from a morally evil action. This knowl- 
edge necessarily calls for a standard, or 
criterion of the morality of human actions ; 
calls for a rule by which man may, as 
it were instinctively, recognize when an 

03 



64 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



action is good and therefore merito- 
rious of his last end, when it is evil and 
accordingly entails the loss of the In- 
finite Good. 

That there is a criterion or standard 
of this kind is, again, universally ad- 
mitted. The controversies all turn 
upon its nature, upon what it is. And 
here there are two broad schools of 
opinion; the Positivist and the Naturalist 
schools of morality. The distinction be- 
tween them lies in the source from 
which they derive the moral criterion. 
Positivists in morality, gather their 
moral standard from a source extrinsic 
to the human act. Those whom I term 
Naturalists in morality locate it in a 
source intrinsic to the moral act, or in 
some element of its nature. I shall first 
say a word or two upon the Criterion of 
Morality set up by the Positivists before 
passing on to the theories advocated by 
the Naturalistic moralists. These con- 
stitute the more numerous school. 

Positivists set out with impugning 
the ontologic or objective existence of 
a moral standard. With them, there- 
fore, it is a ground principle that, ante- 



THE ETHICAL STANDARD. 



65 



cedently to and independently of any 
positive law, there is and can be no 
natural difference or intrinsic unlikeness 
between a good and a bad human ac- 
tion. For the Positivist, accordingly, 
morality is not essential to a human act, 
but accidental only and superadded to 
it by a principle, a law, a tradition, a 
persuasion, which has determined that 
such an act shall be reputed good and 
such another act shall be considered evil. 

Two theories prevail among Posi- 
tivists themselves upon the character of 
this source from which the morality of 
an act is derived. One class teaches 
that this source is the will of man; an- 
other class refers all morality to the 
will of God. Of those who contend 
that all morality is determined by the 
will of man, some again maintain that 
human actions derive their moral char- 
acter from civil laws, others are of the 
conviction that public opinion and pop- 
ular traditions account orimnally for 
the ethical distinction obtaining be- 
tween good and bad actions. For, of a 
fact, we find two possible expressions of 
the human will as a basis or criterion of 

C. E. — 5 



66 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



morality. The one is a designed and, 
so to say it, studied expression, made in 
the shape of law, or of any equivalent 
utterance of public authority; the other 
undesigned and evolved rather through 
many cooperating psychologic and so- 
cial causes until, eventually, certain es- 
timates and measures of action began 
to obtain among men which, later, were 
sanctioned and canonized by public 
opinion, and finally fixed by the preju- 
dices of education and by the unchal- 
lenged traditions of peoples. 

Thos. Hobbes (1588-1679), J. J. 
Rousseau (1712-1778), and the Hege- 
lian philosophers of our day trace the 
ethical source of human action to the 
former or the designed expression of 
the human will, that is, to civil law 
or an equivalent utterance of supreme 
civil authority. For Hobbes, the author 
of regal absolutism, this supreme author- 
ity is the monarch; for Rousseau, the 
apostle of democratic absolutism, it is 
the people; for the Hegelians, the evan- 
gelists of Caesarism, it is the State. 

On the other hand, Montaigne (1533- 
1592), the sceptic; Von Hartmann 



THE ETHICAL STANDARD. 67 



(5.1842), the pessimist ; August Comte 
(1798-1857), the eclectic; John Stuart 
Mill (1806-1873), the utilitarian; Her- 
bert Spencer (ft. 1820), and Alexander 
Bain (ft. 1818), the altruists, more or less 
immediately reduce the moral standard 
to some undesigned expression of the so- 
cial will modified by education, psycho- 
logic environment, ethnic and anthropo- 
logic experience, social evolution or 
civil progress. 

The other class of Positivists consti- 
tute the Divine Will the source or 
criterion of all morality, insomuch that 
one action is morally good and another 
morally bad, because God has willed 
that one be reputed good, the other 
evil. Samuel Pufendorf (1632-1694) 
is the classical representative of this 
theory of the Moral Standard. He bases 
his conclusion upon the attitude which 
morality necessarily bears to law. Moral 
fitness or turpitude is, for Pufendorf, the 
harmony or the discord which exists be- 
tween the human act and law, and, 
inasmuch as law is an ordination by 
the ruler, moral rectitude or turpitude 
is not intelligible antecedently to the 



68 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



ordination or will of God, the Supreme 
Ruler and Lawgiver for the human Con- 
science. 

Now, our limits forbid us to enter 
into a detailed refutation of the Posi- 
tivist position. Moreover, it is true, 
and we concede it to the Positivists, 
that the morality of many human actions 
is extrinsic to the nature of these actions 
themselves; that is, we concede that 
many actions are good simply because 
they are commanded, that many are evil 
simply because they are forbidden by a 
human or divine law. But the Positiv- 
ist position, which is absolute, viz.: that 
either the will of man or that of God is 
the ultimate universal criterion of all 
morality in human action, is false and 
cannot be conceded. For, before find- 
ing any further objection to it, a mo- 
ment's consideration will reveal the 
fact that this criterion is not, itself, final. 
In virtue of this criterion — the will of 
God or that of the supreme civil au- 
thority — is not an act good or bad either 
by the decree of this will or by con- 
formity with it? If so, does this not 
previously suppose that to accept this 



THE ETHICAL STANDARD. 



69 



decree, or to conform to this will, is 
good; that not to accept, or not to con- 
form to it is, on the contrary, bad? Now, 
by what criterion do we know that to 
accept God's decree, or to conform to 
the will of God or of man is good, and 
that not to accept His decree and not 
to conform to God's will or man's will, is 
bad? Not surely by the criterion of 
the law itself, of the divine decree or 
of conformity with the divine or human 
will. For it is precisely this law itself, 
as a criterion, which is in court: 
whether it is good or bad to accept it, 
or to conform to it as a criterion. Hence, 
the law itself cannot settle this point. 

Neither can we appeal to another, or an 
antecedent law. For, first of all, there 
is no will antecedent to the will of God, 
and. within the sphere of human author- 
ity, there is no human will above that 
of the supreme authority. But, even 
admitting this recourse to another, and. 
on the hypothesis, a higher law. human 
or divine, declaring that it is good to 
accept or conform to the will of man or 
of God as a criterion of morality, and 
evil not to do so; the insoluble difficulty 



70 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



is only evaded, not at all removed. 
For then — we shall naturally ask — why 
is it good to accept and to conform to 
this higher law, to which recourse is 
had as a criterion, and evil to do the 
contrary? And here, you observe, the 
original objection remains, viz.: that 
Positivism fails to account for the mo- 
rality of the act or acts upon which the 
very existence of the human or divine 
will, as the moral criterion, depends. 

It will not do, as a last resource, to 
claim that it stands to reason that it is 
good to accept or to conform to the will 
of man or of God as the criterion of mo- 
rality. In that case, first of all, reason, 
and not the will or law of God or man, 
would be the final criterion. But, fur- 
thermore, it does not at all stand to 
reason that it is good to accept or con- 
form even to the will of God as a uni- 
versal and final criterion of morality and 
evil not to accept or conform to it. 
Where, of course, a human act which in 
itself is neither good nor bad, but indif- 
ferent, is forbidden or enjoined by the 
law of God, its morality is indeed then 
determined only by the will of the Di- 



THE ETHICAL STANDARD. 71 

vine Legislator. But there are actions 
so essentially good, or so essentially 
evil that even the will of God is power- 
less to change their moral character. 
Thus blasphemy, idolatry, murder, 
adultery, theft, and other crimes are 
actions so essentially evil that even, on 
the absurdest of suppositions, that He 
wished it, God could not make them 
morally good actions. 

Yet, if, as the Positivist teaches, the 
will of God is the only, the universal, 
the final rule and law of good and bad in 
human actions, then crimes would, if 
God so will it, be essentially good, which 
is something not only false, but fairly 
incomprehensible — false, because an act, 
which is essentially evil, cannot change its 
nature; incomprehensible, because it is 
impossible to see how God, by wishing it, 
can make a deorclination not be a deordin- 
ation, that is, make an act good and not 
good, bad and not bad, at the same 
time. It does not, therefore, stand to 
reason that the will, even of God, is the 
final and universal criterion of morality. 
Much less does it stand to reason that 
the will of man, however expressed, is 



72 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



such a criterion. For this assumes that 
no human law can be unjust or evil, 
whereas, the historical fa^t that laws 
have been opposed by the people and 
repealed by rulers, precisely because 
they were unjust, shows this to be ut- 
terly false. 

Then, too, if the civil law be the 
moral criterion and it ordain that we 
blaspheme, steal, cultivate lewdness, in- 
temperance, lying, murder; these ac- 
tions would then be necessarily good 
acts, and their contraries would be mor- 
ally evil acts, all of which is unspeak- 
ably absurd, and beneath refutation. 
Finally, human laws change; the mo- 
rality of a vast multitude of human 
actions is immutable. Again, the law 
regulating many actions is diverse for 
different places, persons, circumstances, 
while the moral character of these same 
actions is identical, notwithstanding this 
manifold diversity. 

But we shall desist from a further 
criticism of this very unsatisfactory 
theory. Much more yet might be urged 
against the Positivist criterion, as pro- 
posed in detail by Hobbes, Rousseau, 



THE ETHICAL STANDARD. 



73 



and Pufendorf, but enough, we think, 
has been proved against it to establish 
the conclusion that it has no tenable 
grounds upon which to be considered 
a final and universal criterion of mo- 
rality. 

With the rejection of Positivism in 
morality it follows that, there are human 
actions whose morality is intrinsic and 
essential. The universal and final crite- 
rion of morality is not, therefore, some 
principle external to the act, but has 
necessarily a natural basis in the act 
itself. This is the position of those 
whom we have termed Naturalists in 
morality, or of those who connect the 
universal and final criterion of good 
and bad in human action with the na- 
ture itself of the act. As a school op- 
posed to the Positivist, these moralists 
are all agreed upon a natural basis of 
morality. The controversies among them 
are all over the nature of this basis. 
Yet, even in their controversies they 
agreed upon the starting point, that viz., 
the ethical value of a human act is some- 
how wound up with its relation to man's 
Summwn Bonum, or his greatest good. 



74 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



The divergence takes place at their re- 
spective determination of this greatest 
good; and it gives rise to two broad 
theories, called, respectively, the Eudas- 
monistic and the Deontologic theory of 
morals. I shall speak first of the Eu- 
dsemonists. 

The Eudasmonistic moralists place 
man's greatest good in some form of 
temporal well-being or happiness. 
Their standard of morality is, accord- 
ingly, the utility of an action for the 
promotion of this well-being or happi- 
ness. For this reason, this school is 
often termed the Utilitarian School of 
Morals or simply Utilitarianism. There 
are two forms of it; that of individual 
and that of social Utilitarianism. 

Individual Utilitarianism is identical, 
in the first place, with Greek Hedonism, 
represented among the ancients by Aris- 
tippus of Cyrene, the sophist, b. c. 435- 
356, and the founder of the Cyrenaic 
school. In the, eighteenth century this 
form of Utilitarianism was revived by 
the Encyclopaedists, De la Mettrie 
(1709-1751), Helvetius (1715-1771), 
Diderot (1713-1784), and De Volney 



THE ETHICAL STANDARD. 



75 



(1757-1820); and in the nineteenth, it 
has been advocated by the Sensists, 
Hartley (1704-1757), Priestley (1733- 
1804), Hume (1711-1776), and the Ger- 
man materialists, Vogt (#.1817), Mole- 
schott (1822-1893), and Blichner 
( b. 1824 ) . Individual Utilitarianism is, in 
the next place, involved in the Egoism of 
the Epicureans. Their founder was Epi- 
curus, the Greek, and the most graceful 
exponent of their philosophy, the Latin 
poet, Lucretius. In its purity, Epicurism 
has had few modern adherents, although 
in its day it may well be said to have 
rivaled Stoicism as the ethical code of 
the Greeks and Romans. The ground 
principle of both Hedonism and Epi- 
curism is that the greatest good of man 
is pleasure: bodily pleasure or the pleas- 
ure of motion, according to the Hedon- 
ists; mental and bodily pleasure or the 
pleasure of rest and motion, according 
to the Epicureans. So that the criterion 
of good and bad in any human action 
is, from the standpoint of individual 
Utilitarianism, its utility or aptitude to 
promote pleasure or, at least, to obviate 
pain. 



76 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



Social Utilitarianism is a modern and 
also a more comprehensive form of Eu- 
dgemonism. It is mainly of English 
origin, and, in its earliest stage, ap- 
pears as the empirical Utilitarianism 
of Richard Cumberland (1632-1718), or 
rather of Anthony Cooper, Earl of 
Shaftesbury (1671-1713), its represen- 
tative exponent. Shaftesbury makes 
the practice of social benevolence man's 
greatest good. For, on observation, he 
finds in man two natural propensities: 
the egoistic, which he terms "the ideo- 
pathic " tendency, whose object is man's 
private good; and "the sympathetic" 
tendency, the object of which is the 
common good. The subordination of 
the egoistic to the sympathetic propen- 
sities promotes man's greatest good, 
which is social benevolence. Hence, 
actions which aim at the common wel- 
fare are good, those which subserve 
only private purposes, are morally evil. 
Shaftesbury was followed by Jeremy 
Bentham (1748-1832), the founder of 
Positivist Utilitarianism, often termed 
simply Utilitarianism from its being the 
representative expression of this theory, 



THE ETHICAL STANDARD. 



77 



and Positivist, because of its methods 
of construction. John Stuart Mill 
is, probably, its ablest and most co- 
pious exponent. These moralists claim 
to have established this fact: "that 
all men seek pleasure and shun 
pain. 9 ' Hence, they conclude, first, 
that every pleasure is a good and to be 
sought, that every pain is an evil and to 
be avoided. Wherefore man's destiny 
and greatest good is the greatest possi- 
ble sum of pleasure for himself and 
others. In consequence, they conclude 
that, in as far as an action promotes or 
fails to promote the maximization of 
pleasure, or, which is tantamount, the 
minimization of pain, it is morally good or 
morally bad. From these principles it 
easily appears that their doctrine is not 
so very different from the latest form of 
Utilitarianism, that viz., of evolutionary 
Utilitarianism or Altruism founded, in a 
way, and popularized by the teachings 
of Herbert Spencer. 

Altruism ignores the subjective or in- 
dividual relation of pleasure emphasized 
by Bentham and Mill, laying all its 
stress upon the social nature of the 



78 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



greatest good of man. " The greatest 
good of the greatest number " is, for 
the Altruist, man's greatest good and 
the goal of all his activity. The moral 
goodness, accordingly, or evil of a hu- 
man action lies in its positive or nega- 
tive causal attitude towards the greatest 
good of the greatest number. The es- 
timate, however, or the judgment to be 
formed of this attitude is not founded in 
individual experience. It is to be gath- 
ered, upon the principles of Evolution, 
from the laws of life and the conditions 
of existence. Hence, in a system of 
elaborate synthetic philosophy, Spencer 
discusses at great length the laws of 
life and those conditions of psychologic 
and social existence, from which, as 
from a prearranged premise, he gathers 
his codex of secularized Ethics, or Eth- 
ics emancipated from the notion of a 
divine legislation. 

Even from this brief exposition of 
the position of individual and social 
Utilitarianism, it becomes clear that be- 
tween the Christian moralist and the 
Eudsemonist there can be no controversy 
upon the ethical standard. They differ 



THE ETHICAL STANDARD. 



79 



upon the very first principle underlying 
its determination — man's greatest good. 
For the Utilitarian it is either pleasure, 
or social benevolence, or the maximum 
of happiness and minimum of pain, or 
the greatest good of the greatest num- 
ber, that is. in one phrase, it is a finite 
good. Now. we have, at some length, 
established the principle, that man's 
greatest good is not a finite, but an In- 
finite Good — the knowledge and love 
of God. 

The ground principle, therefore, of 
Utilitarianism is false, and. accord- 
ingly, utility, the criterion based upon 
it, cannot be even correct, much 
less, universal and final. But apart 
even from the false principle from which 
it is gathered, the utility of an action 
cannot constitute the criterion of its 
morality. The morality of countless 
actions is intrinsic, and essential, as we 
established against Positivism. The 
criterion, accordingly, of these actions 
must be coordinate, and must, therefore, 
be a principle which is constant and not 
variable; necessary, not contingent; ab- 
solute, not relative. Now, utility is, 



80 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



and can be, no such principle. Utility 
takes after the good which the useful 
action promotes. But the good, being 
finite, is a contingent, not a necessary 
good; it is a variable, not a constant 
good; it is manifoldly relative and not 
an absolute good. 

Any principle, therefore, or criterion 
founded upon utility, cannot be but 
contingent, variable, relative, and, 
therefore, cannot but always fail to 
be the universal and final standard of 
morality, which, in all actions not de- 
pendent for their goodness or evil from 
positive human or divine law, is a con- 
stant, a necessary, and an absolute fea- 
ture of the human act. There are other 
equally cogent arguments subversive of 
Utilitarianism in detail, which we might 
urge; but when a theory lacks a foun- 
dation, and the principle itself, which 
it champions, involves the impossible, 
it is unnecessary, we take it, to dis- 
cuss that theory in detail. It fol- 
lows from the rejection of Positivism 
that the universal and final criterion 
of morality is intrinsic to the nature 
itself of the moral act. From the 



THE ETHICAL STANDARD. 



81 



rejection of Utilitarianism it follows 
that this intrinsic criterion must be 
constant, necessary, absolute. 

This is the position of the third broad 
school of moralists, the Deontologic or 
Necessitarian School. There are many 
classes in this school. They all, how- 
ever, to begin with, coincide upon the 
first principle of the school, that, viz.: 
The criterion of morality must be a fixed, 
absolute and necessary principle. The 
controversies turn upon the nature of 
the principle. They diverge, moreover, 
upon the nature of this principle, into 
three distinct views or theories, that, 
viz., of Moral Sensism ; that of Moral 
Rationalism or Purism; and that of 
Moral Realism. 

For the Sensist, the criterion of 
morality is a faculty. Thos. Reid (1710- 
1796), the founder of the Scotch School 
of Philosophy, appears to have inau- 
gurated this theory. The occasion 
was the offsetting of Hume's Scepti- 
cism. Hume had impugned the ex- 
istence, and impeached the hitherto 
accredited criteria of certitude, viz. : — 
authority, the testimony of the senses, 

C. E. — G 



82 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



Conscience and the objective value of 
our ideas. To place certitude, there- 
fore, upon an unassailable basis, Reid 
postulated the existence in us of the 
instinct of necessary truths in the phys- 
ical, metaphysical and moral order. This 
instinct he denominated Common Sense. 
In virtue of this sense we detect neces- 
sary truths by a natural impulse and 
independently of authority, of the 
senses, of Conscience, and of intellec- 
tual analysis. In the moral order, then, 
we know, according to Reid, a good 
action from an evil one, by our instinct 
of moral truth. And as our faculties 
are constant quantities, and invariable 
and absolute factors, he claims to have 
in this moral instinct, a constant, neces- 
sary and absolute standard of what is 
good and bad in human action. Hut- 
cheson (1694-1746), Reid's contem- 
porary and fellow-professor at Glasgow, 
elaborated the Reidean principle of the 
Common Sense of necessary truths in 
the moral order into what he terms the 
Moral Sense. The office of this sense 
is pretty much the same as that of the 
Conscience, and its relation to the moral- 



THE ETHICAL STANDARD. 83 



ity of an action pretty nearly the same. 
Accordingly, the act which this moral 
sense approves is, upon Hutcheson's 
theory, morally good; that, on the con- 
trary, which it disapproves, is morally 
bad. 

The German pessimist, Arthur Schop- 
enhauer, and the founder of Idealistic 
Realism, Johann F. Herbart, are of the 
Sensist School of Moralists. Schopen- 
hauer's philosophy is, in its constructive 
features, a Pantheism in which all 
things and men are manifestations of an 
absolute, impersonal will-power. This 
absolute, blind will is " will-to-live. " 
This will-to-live is constantly objecti- 
vating itself in the manifold struggles 
of individual men for " will-existence." 
Now, will-existence is, for Schopen- 
hauer, the consummation of absolute 
gratification. But this absolute gratifi- 
cation is impossible without the annihi- 
lation in man of his " will-to-live," 
or which is identical, " his struggle 
for gratification." This annihilation, 
however, can never be realized, ac- 
cording to Schopenhauer. Happi- 
ness, then, in his philosophy, is im- 
C. E.— 6 



84 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



possible, and misery is the native 
lot of all men. This is Pessimism. 
There is but one way out of this 
misery, viz.: the negation of the will- 
to-live. Acts, therefore, which pro- 
mote this negation are good, all others 
are evil. The first stage in this nega- 
tion of the 44 will-to-live " is the feeling 
of pity and compassion for others. It 
is identity with the suffering, i. e., with 
the struggle or 44 will-to-live " of others, 
and forgetfulness, tantamount with 
Schopenhauer to the annihilation of 
one's own 44 will-to-live." This sense, 
then, of pity and compassion is the cri- 
terion of morality. Actions, accord- 
ingly, which are prompted by it, are 
good; actions not prompted by this 
pity and compassion are morally evil. 

Herbart, on the contrary, makes that 
action morally good which pleases, that 
one morally evil which displeases. 
Morality, with him, is part of ^Esthetics, 
which, itself, is grounded upon immedi- 
ate involuntary judgments. By these 
judgments, the predicate, 44 pleasing " 
or 44 displeasing," is involuntarily ap- 
plied to terms of perception, Hence, 



THE ETHICAL STANDARD. 



85 



where the terms perceived are relations 
of the will — which are always expressed 
by acts of the will — those relations or 
acts are termed morally good which 
please ; those, on the other hand, 
morally evil which we involuntarily 
judge to be displeasing. Our aesthetic 
faculty applied to the relations of the 
will, or our Moral Taste, is, from the 
standpoint of Johann F. Herbart, the 
correct standard of the morality of hu- 
man actions. 

It is evident, we imagine, from this 
brief development only, that all these 
theories culminate in the same error — 
the doctrine of a sense -criterion of 
morality. Now, this is an absurdity. If 
sense — it is immaterial how it is de- 
nominated or through what faculty or 
organ it operates — is the criterion-faculty 
of morality, it stands to reason that this 
faculty must know the moral character 
of our actions. The fact, however, is 
that it not only does not apprehend this 
feature, but that it is simplv impossible 
for sense to perceive the morality of 
human actions. And the reason is quite 
a simple one, inasmuch as sense can- 



86 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



not perceive the abstract, whereas mor- 
ality, being the relation between the 
human act and man's ultimate end, is 
altogether an abstract property of the 
human act. 

Moreover, morality is a universal 
feature of the human act, and not 
circumscribed within the limits of this 
or that concrete act. The senses, on 
the other hand, reach only the par- 
ticular and the concrete object. Then, 
again, the application of the moral 
standard in the discrimination of a good 
from an evil action, involves judgment 
and even reasoning. Now the senses, 
however aptly they may seem to ape 
judgments and reasoning, do not cer- 
tainly exercise these acts in the human 
and undisputed sense. Upon these and 
similar grounds alone we are forced 
simply to refuse to discuss the claims of 
Sensism to be able to furnish a legiti- 
mate standard of morality. Sense can- 
not furnish what belongs to the intel- 
lectual order. 

But without entering into too many 
details, the theories which advocate this 
criterion are philosophically unsound, if 



THE ETHICAL STANDARD. 



87 



not distinctly absurd. Reid's blind 
moral instinct and Hutcheson's blind 
moral sense are an implied Scepticism, 
and are really no faculties at all. To 
claim, with these philosophers, that our 
knowledge rests upon first principles 
which we assent to upon a blind, natural 
impulse without evidence or testimony, 
is an implied denial of all certitude, or is 
Scepticism. For it is impossible to see 
how a cognoscitive faculty — one, there- 
fore, made to know its object by seeing 
it — can be blind, can be a merely natural 
impulse and still a genuine cognoscitive, 
that is representative, faculty. 

Schopenhauer's theory, on the other 
hand, is, as I observed above, constructed 
upon Pantheism, and, therefore, not sim- 
ply upon error, but, furthermore, upon 
a rank absurdity. For Pantheism is not 
simply false in its principle of " the 
world is God, " but in its constructive 
evolution it has been, time and time 
again, exposed as a medley of incon- 
gruities and contradictions. Moreover, 
when Schopenhauer makes the indi- 
vidual will identical with the Absolute 
Will, whose only action is a necessary 



85 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



evolution of itself, he thereby eliminates 
the freedom of the human will, which 
is the very root and ground-postulate 
of all and any intelligible moral action. 
If a moral action means anything-, it 
means an action which is physically a 
free action. Discussion, therefore, with 
Schopenhauer, upon a moral standard, 
can result in no coherent meaning. He 
is a pantheist, and. therefore, a fatalist. 
Moral action, on the contrary, negates 
the necessary evolution and fixed char- 
acter of all actions. Schopenhauer is. 
furthermore, a pessimist. Morality, on 
the other hand, is the attitude of a 
human action toward man's final, su- 
preme happiness, and. accordingly, 
rests upon the unchallenged truth of 
man's destiny for completed happiness. 
Schopenhauer eliminates the personal 
will: for even his Absolute Will is im- 
personal. Finally, he removes the free- 
dom of every individual will; for his 
impersonal Absolute Will evolves itself 
through a necessity identical with its 
nature. Now, it is impossible to talk 
of morality with a man who does not 
admit the existence of any personal 



THE ETHICAL STANDARD. 89 



wills, and who denies — how could he 
do otherwise? — the freedom of the im- 
personal, the only will which he does 
admit. 

Herbart falsely assumes that all prac- 
tical philosophy is based upon aesthetic 
judgments, and that Ethics is a depart- 
ment of Esthetics. Experience, I think, 
will, as a fundamental criticism of this 
theory, conyince all that, often, if not 
ordinarily, our tastes are not at all con- 
sulted, either by ourselves or by others, 
in the conduct of some of the most recur- 
ring phases of life. But what is most 
strangely false and positively wicked in 
this theory is the criterion itself. " what- 
ever pleases us is good." This is, to 
say it mildly, the very gospel of license. 
First of all, it is, we submit, a false 
theory, because it is subjective and 
accordingly different for different indi- 
viduals, and in the same individual it 
will vary with his vicissitudes of opin- 
ions, passion and organic disposition. 
Besides, it is self-contradictory. An 
action may. for instance, be very bad 
because it is displeasing to the senses, 
and yet very good because it is pleas- 



90 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



ing, that is, conformable to reason and 
intelligence. Such an action would, 
then, be good and bad at the same time, 
which is very absurd, to say the least. 
But this criterion is, we said further, 
the very franchise of moral evil. For 
it is not merely a license to the pas- 
sions, but an authorization of their right 
to pursue and indulge in that which 
pleases them. And this, if principles 
have any value, is simply the emanci- 
pation of all powers of evil inherent in 
human passion. For, inasmuch as mar. 
is constituted as he is now, a law author- 
izing the indulgence of every passion — 
and the principle which makes every- 
thing good that pleases these corrupt 
propensities in man is such a law — is 
simply an emancipation of every power 
for evil inherent in passionful human 
nature. But let us turn from Moral 
Sensism to Moral Rationalism. 

The leading features of Moral Ration- 
alism, which is the second of the three 
large classes constituting the Deonto- 
logic or Necessitarian school of moralists, 
are represented by the Platonic, Stoic, 
Kantian and Hegelian theories. The 



THE ETHICAL STANDARD. 91 

ancient theories of Plato and the Stoics 
are now obsolete, and we have no spare 
time to discuss them. 

Hegel's theory of the Moral Standard 
is wound up with his doctrine of 
Right; and we shall, therefore, postpone 
our criticism of it to our lecture upon 
the Doctrine of Right. We shall here, 
then, briefly criticise the Kantian theory 
only of the Moral Standard. 

Kant's Moral Standard he calls 
the Categoric Imperative. To estab- 
lish it, he builds upon these founda- 
tions. Rational nature is an ulti- 
mate end in itself. The ultimate end, 
on the other hand, is the objective prin- 
ciple, that is, the aim without itself, 
which moves, or is a motive for, the will. 
Hence, man has within himself his own 
end, and the objective principle of his 
will. But the objective principle of the 
will is, we know, the absolute moral 
rule, the universal, practical law or 
dictate governing human action. Ac- 
cordingly, man's rational nature is the 
universal, practical law and moral rule. 
However, law is not mere nature in man. 
it is his Reason. Moreover, it is not the 



92 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



faculty of Reason in him, but the dic- 
tate of Reason ; and not the mixed or 
concrete dictate, but the pure dictate of 
Reason. Hence, the law of the human 
will is, for Kant, the pure dictate of 
Reason. It is called the pure dictate 
because it is not applied to or wound up 
with any subject-matter, or dependent 
upon any motive apart from this, that it 
is the dictate of Reason. It may, there- 
fore, be formulated thus: Act reasonably 
because to act reasonably is reasonable. 
This is the Imperative of the will, that 
is, the obligatory principle which gov- 
erns its conduct. It is a Categoric Im- 
perative, that is, an absolute, uncondi- 
tional, obligatory principle, first, because 
it takes no cognizance of man's sen- 
suality, or the pathological affections of 
his lower organism, and, secondly, be- 
cause it is promulgated of its own very 
nature, being the formal expression of 
man's rational being. From this premise 
it is easy to gather Kant's objective and 
subjective criterion of morality. It is, 
evidently, conformity with the Cate- 
goric Imperative or the dictate of pure 
Reason. Hence, in the Kantian Code 



THE ETHICAL STANDARD. 



93 



of Ethics, an act is morally good, first, 
when the will chooses that which the 
law ordains : the law. then, is the ob- 
jective criterion : secondly, when it so 
chooses purely out of reverence for the 
law in the abstract, independently of the 
subject-matter, the circumstances, the 
conditions, either of the will or the law. 
If it fail in either choice, it is a morally 
evil action. 

The exception we at once take to this 
theory is the autonomy of Reason which 
it unwarrantably sets up. To begin 
with, man is not. as Kant would have it. 
an end in himself. Nothing, in fact, cre- 
ated can be an end in itself. The thing 
would be a contradiction in terms. For, 
to be an end in itself, a being must be 
a beo'innincr in itself, or, rather, must 
never not have been. Xow. no creature 
— all creatures beinof contingent — is a 
beofinnino- in itself, or self-existent. The 
whole Kantian theory, therefore, is with- 
out a foundation. Moreover, the cate- 
goric feature of this Imperative entails 
a palpably absurd sequence. It limits 
morally o-ood acts to those only which 
are performed out of ,% pure reverence " 



94 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



for the law. This evidently confounds the 
perfection of a moral act with the sim- 
ple reality of such an act, and considers 
no act a morally good act, which is not 
at the same time a morally perfect 
act. Here we have a covert Pessi- 
mism. If this " blue " law is to be our 
Moral Standard, we must despair of 
morally good conduct. For while our 
acts may, as a rule, be moral, they 
are, except under very favorable cir- 
cumstances, not by any means always 
perfect. This criterion is, furthermore, 
practically subjective, and, therefore, as 
changeable as the individual judgment 
of what is the pure dictate of individual 
Reason, and of what is absolute rever- 
ence for the law. It is, finally, very dif- 
ficult to understand how a theory which 
founds the final criterion of morality in 
a subjective principle, does not, in con- 
sequence, remove all possibility of cer- 
tainty in the determination of good and 
evil in human conduct, and does not, 
therefore, precipitate a practical and 
universal Scepticism touching the exis- 
tence of human obligation. Its rejection, 
therefore, brings us to Moral Realism. 



THE ETHICAL STANDARD. 



95 



Moral Realism, so-called because the 
standard which it sets up is founded in 
the reality of things, is the third sys- 
tem embraced under the Deontolog-ic or 
Necessitarian School of Ethics. It of- 
fers us the true standard of morality. 
Its principles are not Rationalistic but 
Christian, not Liberalistic but Catholic. 
To explain, let us observe, first of all. 
that Catholic moralists distinguish two 
criteria or two ethical standards, the one 
subjective, the other, objective. The 
subjective criterion is Conscience. 
It is final for every individual, and 
for particular acts; but it is sub- 
ject to accidental error. We are not 
concerned with it in this lecture. We 
are dealing here with the objective crite- 
rion only, or with that standard which is 
independent of the individual, and his 
faculties and acts; and is founded in 
the internal or essential relations of 
the moral act itself with man's chief 
good. It is two-fold: the o-eneric and 
the specific standard. The object- 
ive generic standard tells us why in 
general a moral act is good or bad; 
the objective specific criterion gives us 



96 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



to know further, whether it is this or 
that particular kind of moral good- 
ness or moral evil. These criteria are 
not, as would at first appear, independ- 
ent of one another. They are related 
and supplementary, as genus and spe- 
cies. But, for the sake of order and 
perspicuity, we shall have to set 
forth and establish one after the 
other. 

From the principle we established in 
the first lecture and which rests upon the 
fact and laws of creation — the principle, 
namely, that the final goal of human 
activities is Good, the Infinite Good — it 
follows, without further urging, that the 
moral goodness or evil of a human act 
lies somehow in its final proportion with 
the attainment of God as the Infinite 
Good or ultimate end of man. The diffi- 
culty or problem, if indeed there be, is 
how to conceive and express this 
proportion in scientific detail, and as a 
practical criterion. This difficulty is, 
in part at least removed by, first of all, 
putting the doctrine in the following 
thesis; secondly, by establishing and, at 
the same time, illustrating its truth by 



THE ETHICAL STANDARD. 



97 



two or three demonstrative arguments, 
wherefore : 

The ultimate, objective, generic norm 
or criterion of morality is the Divine 
Goodness or the Divine Nature conceived 
by us as the Absolute Sanctity or Abso- 
lute Principle of every order of created 
tendencies or actions: the proximate 
norm is the rational nature of man 
completely considered, that is, absolutely 
and relatively considered. 

The first part of this proposition 
should offer no difficulty, after our lec- 
ture upon the final end of human action. 
From the doctrine of that lecture it 
follows that God Himself is somehow 
the Ultimate Norm of good and bad in 
human action. And wherefore? Be- 
cause He is the final end; and it is, we 
know, the end which, in every order of 
action, qualifies and specifies an action. 

On the other hand, however, the end 
specifies and qualifies inasmuch only, 
and in so far only, as it is the good in- 
tended, and pursued by said action. 
For the motive-value of the end is the 
goodness which it offers to the pursuit 
of the will. God Himself, therefore, 



98 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



is, if we view things from the stand- 
point of the human action itself, the 
ultimate rule and measure of good and 
bad in our actions, inasmuch as He is 
the Infinite Goodness, which these 
actions have or should have in view. 
But we reach the same conclusion from 
the standpoint of the Divine Goodness 
Itself. The Divine Goodness or Sanc- 
tity is, we know, the eternal regulative 
principle of the Divine Will. So much 
so, that the rectitude of the Divine Will 
is its identity with the Divine Essence 
conceived as the absolute order or reg- 
ulating principle of all actions in God 
and out of God in creation. 

Naturally therefore, it is in conse- 
quence the regulating source of all ac- 
tions within God and without God de- 
pendent upon the Divine Will. Now, 
all created action, whether necessary or 
free, is dependent for its existence upon 
the Divine Will ; and finds accordingly 
its last rule and measure in the Divine 
Goodness which is the last rule and 
measure of the Divine Will Itself. 

Finally, the nature itself of the 
ultimate objective criterion of moral- 



THE ETHICAL STANDARD. 



99 



ity evinces the same conclusion. The 
ultimate objective criterion of mo- 
rality must be : (1) the rule ; (2) 
subordinate to no other rule; (3) 
eminently objective, that is, existing 
outside of the moral agent, and inde- 
pendent of the faculties and acts of this 
moral agent ; (4) beyond all other 
rules, essential or founded in the nature 
of things ; (5) of itself immutable and 
universal. 

The Divine Goodness or Excel- 
lence alone of God is all this. It 
is the rule ; because it is the absolute 
end. It is subordinate to no other 
rule ; for it is so the last end that be- 
yond it there is no other. It is em- 
inently objective ; because, again, the 
last end is as independent of the facul- 
ties and acts of man, whose aim it is, as 
God Himself is independent of man. 
It is founded beyond all others in the 
essences of things ; for, inasmuch as 
it is the final end, and all other ends 
are therefore by their nature subor- 
dinate to it. it is the essential term or 
end of all things. It is. finally, of itself 
immutable and universal: because it 



100 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



is, as their end, wound up with the im- 
mutable nature and ubiquitous distri- 
bution of things. 

Viewed, then, from the standpoint 
of the human act, or from that of 
the Divine Goodness, or from the 
nature of the ultimate criterion itself, 
the Divine Goodness is the final cri- 
terion of rectitude in moral acts. So 
that human acts which are so propor- 
tioned to this end that they finally con- 
duce to its attainment, that is, to the 
eternal knowledge and fruition of the 
Divine Excellence, are morally good 
acts; those, on the contrary, which 
finally forfeit this same end or this 
knowledge and fruition, are morally 
evil human actions. 

* But it is obvious that this final and 
absolute norm is not immediately known 
to us ; whereas the criterion of morality, 
if we would have an efficient one, must 
be a self-evident principle always and 
everywhere at hand to our minds, with- 
out the necessity, as each act is to be 
posited, of reasoning to the existence 
and judgment of our Moral Standard 
through the medium of a nearer and 



THE ETHICAL 



STANDARD. 



101 



more evident truth or principle. This 
criterion, we say. in the second part of the 
thesis, is the rational nature of man com- 
pletely considered ; or. putting the same 
principle more briefly and familiarly.' it 
is the rationality or irrationality of the 
human act under consideration. 

The reason of this is simple, yet entirely 
convincing". We judge of the nature of 
an act from two sources : Firstly, but 
remotely, from the end it has in view ; 
secondly, but proximately, from the na- 
ture of the principle or spring from 
which this act starts, and naturally so. 
For the nature of the being" which posits 
the act is. if the creature is gifted with 
knowledge, the essentially directive 
principle of this act g^uiding* it towards 
the end appointed for it by the Creator. 
Now, there is no difficulty in seeing 
that the rational nature of man is the 
essentially directive principle of his 
moral acts. Therefore, an act is morally 
good or morally evil, in as far as it fol- 
lows or does not follow the guidance of 
this directive moral principle, that is. in 
as far as it is proximately at least con- 
formable or not conformable to the 



102 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



rational nature in man ; that is, again, in 
as far as it is rational or irrational ; that 
is, finally, in as far as it is conformable 
to reason or not conformable to reason, 
not to reason as Kant understood it — 
the pure dictate or abstractly formulated 
content of a rational motive to act — but 
to the rational nature itself in man. Nor 
do we wish to imply by this discrimina- 
tion that reason, in the sense of a 
dead, uninformed, unenergizing nature 
is, in itself, and independently of any 
relations it may involve, the proximate, 
generic criterion of morality. It must, 
we say, be rational nature completely 
considered. 

This distinction insists upon the fact 
that, it is rational nature as the direc- 
tive principle of human acts, which 
constitutes the criterion of morality. 
Now, rational nature in man is directive 
not as mere nature, but as a rational 
nature possessed of and exercising a 
certain, practical knowledge, that is, that 
knowledge which exists in our practical 
reason, and which is identical with those 
rational lights and principles by which 
each one is guided in every action as it 



THE ETHICAL STANDARD. 103 

occurs to be performed. These prin- 
ciples or lights are, on the other hand, 
the immediate, practical judgments 
which we form in consciousness, or in 
our abiding perception of the objective 
order of things or in our perception of the 
natural adjustment of all things to their 
appointed ends. For this objective order 
is that threefold essential relation in 
which man exists: primarily, to God, as 
his first beginning and last end ; sec- 
ondly, to other created things, either as 
master in the irrational world or as fellow- 
man with other human beings; thirdly, to 
his own faculties, as a creature in whom 
the lower faculties are, by the arrange- 
ment of nature, in subordination to the su- 
perior powers of mind and will. In this 
order all things within and without man 
are, from the highest to the lowest, mani- 
foldly adjusted and disposed by the 
Creator to subserve ends and uses which 
at one and the same time so perfect 
each creature's own individual nature, 
as thereby to contribute to the perfec- 
tion of the entire universe. Man, in 
consequence, by diverting any creature 
or any of his own faculties from its 



104 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



known ends and uses, frustrates, in as 
far as in him lies, the purpose of its 
particular creation, tampers with the 
order which God has put in things and 
thus violates one or more of the essen- 
tial relations which constitute the ob- 
jective or natural order of things. 

Now, this objective order, or this ad- 
justment and disposition of all things, 
through their proximate ends and pur- 
poses, to their final end, is but a projec- 
tion in created things of the Divine 
Mind ordaining all things to their ap- 
pointed ends in conformity with the su- 
preme regulating principle of His abso- 
lute Goodness, or, which is the same 
thing, His Absolute Sanctity. The knowl- 
edge, therefore, of this objective order, 
from which we gather those immediate 
principles which constitute the directive 
light in our rational nature, is in reality 
the perception, by the practical mind, of 
the Divine Goodness. It is the perception 
of the Divine Nature as the absolute 
order and sanctity ordaining first, all 
things without man — creatures and his 
fellowman — to man, according to the 
nature and the natural uses of each; sec- 



THE ETHICAL STANDARD. 



105 



onclly, ordaining all things within man 
— his body, faculties — to his mind, and 
through it to his rationally guided will 
according to the nature and natural uses 
of his body, his faculties and members; 
ordaining" finally the mind and will of 
man to God, as to their first beginning 
and last end. 

Rational nature, immediately man has 
attained the use of his rational faculties, 
apprehends this order, step by step. 
Man, himself, is thus, by the necessity 
of his nature, gradually, yet insensibly 
as it were, imbued with this objective 
order, and familiarized with this adjust- 
ment or disposition of things which 
represents the Divine Mind ordaining all 
things to their appointed ends and uses 
according to the principle of all order, 
viz.: the Divine Goodness and Sanctity. 
Thus imbued or enlightened, his rational 
nature — man himself — grows up pene- 
trated, whether he will or not, with the 
order which God, governed, as we con- 
ceive it, by the Sanctity of His nature, 
has founded in creatures. In the prac- 
tical realization of this order — or in 
those ever-at-hand, immediate judg- 



106 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



ments through which we almost uncon- 
sciously express to ourselves the neces- 
sity, if we would attain to our own 
ultimate well-being, of using our own 
faculties and all creatures in keeping 
with those uses for which it is evident from 
their respective natures, that God in- 
tended and ordained them — consists the 
self-evident principles of the moral order, 
or those ever-abiding convictions or 
lights which govern man in the exercise 
of his free or moral actions, or in 
the adjustment of his conduct to the 
attainment of his final end. Now, it 
is this adjustment which constitutes 
their rationality or conformity to rea- 
son. 

Taken, then, in this relative but com- 
plete sense, man's reason or rational na- 
ture is a true criterion of morality, al- 
though a proximate, dependent and sec- 
ondary one. For it is thus a true rule, ex- 
hibiting, as it does, the created expression 
of the Divine Goodness, viz.: The order 
placed in things by God. It is not sub- 
ordinate to any created rule. It is objec- 
tive or independent of man's faculties 
or acts. It is his nature. It is founded 



THE ETHICAL STANDARD. 1Q7 

in the essences of the things; being 
founded in man's nature completely 
considered, or in the essential relations 
of man to God, to creatures, and to his 
own faculties. Finally, it is immutable 
and universal; for it is identical with 
man's nature, and coextensive with all 
his essential and accidental relations to 
all things. Hence, briefly, the generic 
criterion of morality is, proximately, 
reason; remotely, the Divine Goodness 
or Sanctity. 

From this doctrine it now follows 
that all human acts which conform to 
this objective and final standard of 
moral rectitude are alike in their generic 
moral goodness, and that those acts 
which do not conform to this norm are 
all alike in their generic moral evil. 
But neither all good acts conform in 
the same manner, nor all evil acts fail 
in the same manner to conform to this 
ultimate criterion of morality. Hence 
it is, that there exist different species of 
good acts and of evil' acts, according to 
the manner of their conformity or dif- 
formity with this final standard. This 
gives rise to the necessity of determin- 



108 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



ing the Specific Standard of good and 
bad in human action. 

This is not, of course, a new or different 
criterion from the objective and final 
standard which has been established, but 
a principle rather, or means by which we 
may know in what manner any individual 
human act conforms or does not con- 
form to the universal and final standard 
of all moral good and evil in human 
acts. Explained in this way, the spe- 
cific criterion of human actions may be 
enunciated in the following principle 
or proposition : 

The object of the act, the intention 
of the agent, and the circumstances of 
the action, constitute the threefold 
moment from which the moral species, 
that is, the conformity or nonconform- 
ity of individual acts with the ulti- 
mate norm of moral rectitude, in 
any and all cases is certainly deter - 
milled. 

The truth upon which this principle 
rests is the following : Everything from 
which the final direction of a free action 
depends, goes to constitute its species 
or the special manner of its conformity 



THE ETHICAL STANDARD. 109 

or nonconformity with the final moral 
criterion. Now, there is nothing from 
which the final direction of any act, free 
or otherwise, so much depends as the 
object or term sought through the exer- 
cise of said act, Nothing, therefore, so 
much contributes to the specification of 
the act as its object or the subject-mat- 
ter upon which it is occupied. 

However, the intention or the end 
aimed at by the act is second only to the 
object as a specifying principle. The nor- 
mal man will not act without a motive. 
The intention of the accent is the motor- 
principle of the act and in so far is, next 
to the object, responsible for the nature 
or character of the act itself. As to the 
circumstances, their specifying power is 
similar, if not equally primary with that 
of the object itself. They integrate the 
object. It cannot exist without them; and, 
consequently, in their relation to the act 
they take on to a certain extent the 
efficacy of the object itself which the act 
has in view. 

Where, then, the object of the human 
act is good, that is, in conformity 
with reason and, therefore, ultimately 



110 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



in harmony with the Divine Mind 
ordaining or ordering all things ac- 
cording to the principle of all order, 
the Divine Goodness or Sanctity ; 
where, secondly, the intention of the 
agent is, in like manner, good; and 
where the circumstances of the act are in 
the same sense good; the human act 
itself is good, and good with that par- 
ticular kind or degree of goodness indi- 
cated by "the object, the end, and the 
circumstances of the act. If, on the con- 
trary, the object is not good, the intention 
and circumstances being good, that is 
not in conformity proximately with the 
evident principles of our rational nature 
and remotely with the Divine Sanctity ; 
or again, if, the object being good, and 
the circumstances being- good, the inten- 
tion of the agent is evil ; or if, finally, 
the object and the intention being good, 
the circumstances of the act are evil, the 
act itself is evil, according to the old 
adage and moral maxim, " Bonum ex 
Integra causa,) malum ex quocunque 
defectu " — an act is good when all 
its elements are good, it is evil when 
any element is bad. 



THE ETHICAL STANDARD. \\\ 

To resume, then, the doctrine of this 
lecture, I submit that: Human acts are 
of a fact morally good or morally evil. 
Hence the necessary existence of a 
moral standard. This cannot be the 
Positivist Standard — the human or Di- 
vine Will — for countless acts are essen- 
tially and immutably good or bad ante- 
cedently to, and independently of, any 
and all law. It cannot be any form of 
Eudaemonism, such as Hedonism, Epicur- 
ism or Utilitarianism, for they all sup- 
pose that the final end, and chief good of 
man, is a finite good. It is not any 
criterion set up by Moral Sensism, for 
morality is an immaterial and abstract, 
not a material and sensible prop- 
erty of human acts. It is not the pure 
dictate of reason or Kant's Cat- 
egoric Imperative, because this sup- 
poses man to be an end in himself and 
reason to be self-sustaining*. 

But the ultimate generic criterion of 
morality is, somehow, God or the Divine 
Mind ordering all things within and with- 
out Himself according to His Divine 
Goodness or Sanctity — the absolute prin- 
ciple of all order. The proximate and 



112 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



dependent criterion is the rational 
nature of man as the directive prin- 
ciple of his human actions, that is 
completely considered, or as cognizant of 
the objective order founded in creation 
by the ordaining Sanctity of God. The 
specific criterion of the morality of 
human actions, or that element in any 
free act which indicates at once to the 
agent the fact and manner of its con- 
formity or difformity with the universal 
and final standard of good and bad in 
human actions, is the threefold element 
of the object of the act, the intention 
of the agent, and the circumstances 
under which the free act is exercised. 



Lecture Third 



C. E— 8 



(113) 



The Natural Law 

OR 

The Primitive Grounds of Moral 
Conduct 

mm 

IN our first lecture we set forth the 
end towards which all human acts 
are to freely tend. In our second lec- 
ture we established the true principle 
by which we may certainly determine, 
both generally and particularly, whether 
an action conduces to this end and is 
therefore morally good, or forfeits this 
end, and is accordingly morally evil. 
But moral conduct, it is evident, and 
therefore Christian Ethics, which deals 
with the ground principles of this con- 
duct, implies more than this. We must 
further "do good and avoid evil ;" that 
is, we are obliged to perform those 
actions which our moral criterion — r 
our rational nature — teaches us to be 
morally good acts or acts which con- 
duce to our final end, and obliged to 

115 



116 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



omit those actions which this same cri- 
terion declares to be morally evil acts 
or actions whose performance involves 
an inevitable forfeit of this same end. 

That, therefore, our doctrine of 
moral conduct may be complete, we 
shall in the present lecture examine the 
causes at work upon our free will, re- 
quiring it to "do good and to avoid 
evil." That, at the same time, we may 
observe a certain order in our study, 
we shall first ascertain what is the im- 
mediate principle or motive requiring 
us to " do good and avoid evil." Sec- 
ondly, we shall determine the natural 
source whence this principle or motive 
derives its force ; and, thirdly, we shall 
establish that this natural source is not 
self-sufficient, but has its first begin- 
nings in God. So that the final reason 
why we must do only morally good 
actions and avoid morally evil acts is, 
like the principle by which we distin- 
guish what is a morally good act from 
what is a morally evil one, ultimately 
to be reduced to God Himself. 

Now, the immediate principle or 
motive requiring us to "do good and 



THE NATURAL LAW. 



117 



avoid evil," is the motive or principle of 
moral obligation, a doctrine which for 
method's sake and perspicuity we enun- 
ciate in the following proposition : 

The immediate motive of rectitude 
in human conduct is our moral obliga- 
tion to do good and avoid evil. 

The grounds and certainty of this 
truth rest upon the broad postulate of 
creation, with which we opened our 
first lecture. In virtue of the design 
in pursuance of which all things come 
out from God and trend backwards to 
Him as to the center of all order, the 
common destiny of all things is to move 
onward, each in its way and after its 
kind, towards God. Of this universal 
movement God is the Prime Mover. 
He has founded, conserves, and. by 
His concourse, promotes its progress 
for the extrinsic manifestation of His 
glory. But creatures, as secondary 
causes, cooperate in the execution of 
this movement, of which thev form the 
integral factors. This cooperation is a 
law of their nature, bein^ identical, rad- 
ically, with their natural activities and 
the exercise of their native energies. 



118 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



By a triple, immediate necessity, there- 
fore, every creature, rational or irration- 
al, is inserted into this universal move- 
ment or order of all things towards 
God, viz., by the necessary possession 
of its individual or proper activity, by 
the necessity to exercise this activity, 
and by the necessity of putting it forth 
for the proximate and remote end of its 
creation. It is this necessity which 
constitutes the bond which fixedly links 
all thing's to the execution of this 
divinely founded movement, and which, 
by a constraint rooted in the nature of 
each, binds every creature to the attain- 
ment of its final end. Now, this bond 
we term natural obligation, employing 
the phrase in, of course, its largest 
sense. This bond, or natural constraint, 
affects creatures after the manner of 
their natures, and is, therefore, essen- 
tially different in rational and irrational 
creatures. 

In irrational creatures, the necessity 
incorporating them into their final end- 
order is absolute. For it is their phys- 
ical determination: (1) To act ; (2) to 
act thus, and not otherwise ; (3) and, 



THE NATURAL LAW. 



119 



finally, to act for a single, set purpose, 
and not for a choice of aims or objects, 
It is the Creator who brings them — by 
means, of course, of their own activity 
— to their respective ends. 

Rational creatures, however, are their 
own guides, because they are capable of 
understanding their end. and of appre- 
ciating the means of reaching this end. 
Thev are. further, their own determining 1 
principle, being- by nature free to act or 
do as thev please. Hence the necessity 
which links them to their end -order is 
absolute, but disjunctive, as we say. 
It is absolute as to the substance or 
final outcome of this necessity ; it is 
disjunctive as to the manner of comply- 
ing 1 with the same necessity. 

In the case of irrational creatures, 
predetermined as they are to fulfill their 
individual end-orders, and thus to con- 
tribute to the universal order, this neces- 
sity is absolute in its substance, that is, 
in its final coercive success, and abso- 
lute, too. in its mode of fulfillment, in- 
asmuch as these creatures are not at lib- 
erty, but are constrained to fulfill this 
necessity in the way that has been prede- 



120 CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 

termined for them by the Creator. This 
obligation of theirs or necessity to ob- 
serve their order, and remain in line with 
the movement of all things towards God 
is often, by an analogical use of the 
term, called physical obligation. 

In man, the only rational being in the 
corporeal world, this obligation or neces- 
sity is, by an exclusive and strict employ- 
ment of the word, known as and called 
moral obligation. For while man, like 
the rest of creatures, is, in one way or 
another, bound to carry out the designs 
of his Creator and to go back to God 
sought or unsought as his last end, this 
necessity of fulfilling the universal end- 
order of his being is, even for man, ab- 
solute so far as its substance or ultimate 
coercive outcome is concerned. But 
the manner is, since man is a free agent, 
entirely in the hands of his own option. 
He must fulfill the final order of his 
creation — go back to God — and in so 
far his obligation is absolute. But he 
may fulfill this divinely imposed obliga- 
tion either by seeking God, as his 
rational nature, the criterion of good 
and bad in all his choices, directs ; or, 



THE NATURAL LAW. 



121 



by constituting some creature, contrary 
to the dictate of this rational nature, the 
aim of his final aspirations, he may ful- 
fill this same order by undergoing the 
vindictive reaction which, by the eternal 
loss of the Infinite Good, compensates 
for its violation in submitting man to the 
only alternative destiny of responsible 
creatures, viz.: the necessary penalty of 
final unhappiness. The force, accord- 
ingly, binding man to observe the order 
instituted in things by the Creator, is a 
disjunctive necessity acting upon his 
free will, and therefore termed a moral 
obligation. This necessity requires him 
either to remain within this order, or to 
undergo, as an alternative and compen- 
sating lot, the loss forever of his final 
and beatifying good, the possession of 
God. 

While, therefore, moral obligation 
is not a physical bond or force, it is 
evidently not a merely logical neces- 
sity. It is a real energy, inasmuch as 
it has its foundation in the final end- 
order incident to the very constitution of 
things ; but moral, inasmuch as it does 
not exert itself in the determination of 



122 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



some blind, uninitiative, physical force 
in man, but appeals to a rational and 
natural motive of rectitude in conduct, 
to the free will or determinative power 
in man. Its root, therefore, is twofold, 
the one proximate and subjective ; the 
other remote and objective. Their 
union is integral to the complete force 
of this necessity. The former is the 
practical individual judgment exhibit- 
ing a double objective necessity to the 
will ; that of the end in itself and that 
of the means to this end. This neces- 
sity of the end in itself exhibited to the 
will by the moral judgment, is the un- 
interrupted integrity of the order or 
course of free actions which unques- 
tionably will insure our last end, 
whereas that of the means is the posi- 
tion or omission of any free act repre- 
sented by the judgment as necessary to 
the integrity of this course or order. 

Reason presenting this twofold neces- 
sity becomes an imperative dictate urg- 
ing, in as far as reason by its represen- 
tative ability can urge, the free will to 
the position or omission of any action in 
question. However, while this practical 



THE NATURAL LAW. 



123 



judgment is, as the proximate and sub- 
jective root of our moral obligation, a 
prerequisite of morally good conduct, 
it is not. itself, strictly speaking, the 
obligatory element or moment urging 
us to "do good and avoid evil." This 
element lies back of this judgment, and 
is antecedent to its formulation, being 
objective, that is, founded in the real or 
ontologic nature or basis of things con- 

o a 

stituting the premises or moral en- 
vironment of the act itself. 

The true obligatory moment therefore 
urging us to do good and avoid evil, is 
the ontologic or real value of the dis- 
junctive of that absolute necessity by 
which all things are required to remain 
within the sphere of their -end-orders or 
movement towards their appointed ends; 
a necessity, that is. of either observing 
this order or of suffering the eternal loss 
of the Infinite Good. This disjunctive 
necessity may. indeed, be either a prime 
natural necessity, that is, one founded 
immediately in the very nature of 
the moral act itself, as the . moral 
necessity to adore God. to believe in 
revelation, not to blaspheme, not to per- 



124 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



jure one's self, not to kill, not to steal, 
etc., or it may be a positive necessity, 
that is, one founded immediately in a 
Divine or human law. But this latter 
necessity is founded upon the natural 
obligation or necessity of receiving the 
law itself and the necessity of observing 
all rightly constituted order, whether its 
observance is enjoined by the will of 
God or man, or impressed upon us by 
the very nature itself of things. 

From all of this it is now clear that 
the universal and ubiquitous obligatory 
moment or force urging us to "do good 
and avoid evil," is immediately at least, 
the force or moment of moral obligation, 
that is the disjunctive necessity of ob- 
serving the ordained uses and order of 
things, or of suffering the eternal reaction 
of this order against its temporal viola- 
tion. When this disjunctive necessity is 
presented to the will by the practical 
reason, we have the integral cause or 
motive which, in any and all moral 
actions, urges us to " do good and avoid 
evil." So that moral obligation may 
not inaptly be defined to be " a bond 
founded mediately or immediately in 



THE XA TUBAL LA IT. 125 

the nature of things, and revealed to 
man bv the lig'ht of his practical reason, 
constraining him to either freely and 
rationally observe the divinely appointed 
order of things bv mediately or imme- 
diately tending- in all things towards 
the final possession of the Infinite Good, 
or to observe this same order by aton- 
ing for its violation in time, by the 
eternal forfeit of the Infinite Good, the 
term and reward of its faithful observ- 
ance. 

From this analysis of the natural obli- 
gation or obligatory force inducing- us. 
albeit freely, to "do g*ood and avoid 
evil." it becomes evident, that a prin- 
ciple or necessity of this universal 
breadth and coercive strength supposes 
a source or origin in nature itself with 
which it is in a very definite sense 
identical, and from which it springs as 
from an immediate and sufficient 
cause. On the other hand, the 
necessity underlying moral obliga- 
tion implies or connotes law. For it is, 
as I have shown, a force imperative of 
order. Hence, the origin or source of 
an obligation so far reaching- as the 



126 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



universe of human activity, must, in 
the nature of things, justly merit to be 
termed the Natural Law. That it is 
natural, arises from the universality, 
constancy and uniformity of man's moral 
obligation, to which it stands in the 
relation of cause to effect. 

That, moreover, the origin of this ob- 
ligation is a law, we know from the defi- 
nition or analysis of law. Law, in its 
widest meaning, is, irrespective of the 
freedom or necessity of the action, a rule 
or measure of action. In this sense, even 
the predetermined sequences of irrational 
actions from their native sources, is a 
law, which we term the physical law of 
nature. In a narrower acceptation, law 
is a rule, a formula or a method of prac- 
tice or deliberate and trained action. 
It is in this sense that we take law, when 
we speak of the laws of commerce, of 
war; of the laws of painting, sculpture, 
poetry, logic, music, etc. In its philo- 
sophical meaning, however, or in that 
sense connoted by obligation, law is any 
" ordination of reason promulgated 
with a view to the common good by him 
on whom the care of the community 



THE NATURAL LAW. 



127 



devolves." Hence its source must be 
reason, i. 6., a rational or intelligent 
nature. For it is a rule or a measure of 
human actions, governing their tendency 
towards man's last end or ultimate good. 

Yet, it is not a mere idea, or judgment 
of reason. It must emanate from ra- 
tional nature as an ordination or as a 
decree, that is, as an act both of the 
intellect and will of the legislator. Be- 
cause a law, after all, is a wish that the 
subject conform to a certain norm or 
order of things set by the superior. For 
this reason too the decree or law must 
be promulgated. To bind the subject, 
the law must be brought to his knowl- 
edge or notice, which is what we under- 
stand by its sufficient promulgation. It 
is also to further the common good, as 
against a private or special interest. In 
this it is distinguished from a precept, 
which is promulgated to a single indi- 
vidual or is meant to promote isolated or 
individual aims. And, finally, as the 
definition intimates, it is an ordination 
promulgated by him upon whom the care 
of the community devolves. For, as 
St. Thomas observes, law primarily 



128 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



and principally aims at order, whose 
object is always the common good. 

The office, accordingly, of constituting 
that which aims at promoting the uni- 
versal good pertains naturally either to 
the community or to its legitimately con- 
stituted vicegerent. Hence it is that the 
legislator is, as society is constituted, 
the individual or body upon whom the 
care of the community by choice or 
right devolves. Now, moral obliga- 
tion, which, as we explained, is the 
immediate motive why we " do good 
and avoid evil," is not uncaused. It 
finds its source in the Natural Law or 
in that ordination of reason promulgated 
by the Author of Nature, on whom the 
government and good of the universe 
depends. This doctrine may be formu- 
lated in the following proposition: 

The proximate source of all moral 
obligation is the Natural Laiv, 

There are two points set forth in 
this proposition: (1) That there is a 
Natural Law, and (2) that it is the source 
of our mortal obligations. The existence 
of the Natural Law has been impugned; 
but without stable grounds. Its exist- 



THE NATURAL LAW. 



129 



ence. in fact, is the objective basis of 
Conscience, and cannot therefore be 
legitimately questioned without ruling 
out the testimony of Conscience. For 
our rational nature, under the aspect of 
its manifestation to us through the facts 
of Conscience, or of our personal and in- 
timate experience, truly exhibits every 
feature of a moral law framed and pro- 
mulgated by the Creator. Our intimate 
moral experience, accordingly, apart 
from any a priori argument, vouches for 
the existence in man of the Xatural 
Law. 

The fact, known to everybody, is that 
our rational nature or the principles of 
the practical reason in us made thus 
manifest through Conscience, is a sub- 
jective, stable rule, speculatively and 
effectively legislating for the ultimate 
and divinely appointed end-order of hu- 
man actions: speculatively inasmuch as 
it is a proximate norm or guide to the 
moral agent as to what is and what is not 
a good action; practically, by binding his 
will to the election of good as against evil 
conduct, through a real although moral 

necessity. For. upon consulting* our 
c. E*— 9 



130 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



intimate experience or Conscience, we 
shall find that with the same evidence — 
and one inseparable in us from the use of 
reason — with which we invincibly judge 
that certain actions are good, and others 
evil ; with the same do we at the same time 
as invincibly apprehend that evil actions, 
just because evil, are illicit, and that 
good actions, just because they are 
good, are licit, and some of them to that 
extent here and now licit and even nec- 
essary to the rectitude of the moral 
order, that they are therefore precepted. 
We therefore feel that, of a fact and by 
nature, we are, as it were, imperatively 
bound to avoid the evil and to perform 
the morally good actions. 

Conscience, therefore, declares to us 
that there is within us an imperative rule 
or measure or rational ordination gover- 
ning our conduct. Nay, Conscience re- 
veals more than this to one who is not a 
liar to himself. It reveals to him that this 
rule, in its directive and obligatory force, 
emanates from God, upon Whom the 
care of this universe of men and things 
devolves, and that, therefore, it exhibits 
the full features of law. The universal- 



THE NATURAL LAW. 



131 



ity of its self-evident principles or dic- 
tates and their absolute value show that 
reason is not a law in itself, but in so far 
only as it is a participation in us and a 
derivation from the Divine Mind which is 
the prime law and rule, as it is the prim- 
itive founder and conservator, of the 
broad community of all things. For the 
principles and dictates of no reason 
can be universal and independent but 
that reason upon which the good of the 
universe of things depends. 

Then, again, the manner in which this 
internal authority as well when it com- 
mands as when it only judges, manifests 
itself to the individual Conscience, in- 
dicates its divine origin. For each one 
of us feels that he submits himself to this 
authority not always of his own accord ; 
but that even unwillingly we regard it 
and submit to it as to a majesty distinct 
from ourselves, as to an authority above 
us, and as to the universal and inexorable 
guardian of the universal order. So 
much so that, upon the violation of this 
order, we fear this offended majesty, and 
with an invincible dread hear it through 
the interior voice of Conscience threat- 



132 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



ening us with vengeance even for crimes 
or violations of order which are not pub- 
lic but hidden and even exempt from 
the action of human tribunals. 

Our rational nature, therefore, or 
practical reason as the directive and ob- 
ligatory principle of moral acts, exhibits 
all the features of the Natural Law. For 
it is (1) an ordination of reason, that is, 
a rule or measure of action having in 
view man's common, i. e., essential good, 
his last end and all things contributing 
to it. It is (2) promulgated by Him upon 
whom the care of the community of 
men devolves, viz.: God, the supreme 
ordinator and ruler. For man's reason, 
its activity, its universal first principles, 
are derived from God and therefore 
reflect the mind and will of God in His 
government of the universe of men and 
things. And, finally (3) this promulga- 
tion being made to man by the gift of 
his rational nature, the law which is 
identical with this nature as a directive 
and obligatory principle of moral actions, 
is in very truth a Natural Law. 

Were we then to consult Conscience 
only, the existence in man of the Natural 



THE NATURAL LA W. 



133 



Law would be as evident as a first 
principle. But we are not obliged to have 
recourse to Conscience only. The fact 
of man's creation and destiny to a final 
end necessarily implies the existence in 
him of the Natural Moral Law. The 
Natural Law is man's only means of 
reaching this end. Beiiw free, the sole 
link by which he is bound to order and 
to his last end. is law. Any other bond 
supposes the destruction of his free will. 
Furthermore, it must be a natural law, 
that is. one known to him by the fact of 
his rationality or the light of his rational 
nature. For man. like every other 
creature, must tend towards his destiny 
naturally, or by that specific force which 
nature has given him. Besides, the end 
he is to reach is a natural one. and, 
therefore, to be reached by natural 
means. 

Whereas, finally, were there no Nat- 
ural Moral Law in man. there would ex- 
ist no positive law. For even the pos- 
itive Divine Law supposes the Natural 
Moral law. Man would not. in fact could 
not. obey God. unless antecedently his 
reason made it clear to him that it was 



134 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



right and good for him to receive and 
acquiesce to the orders and laws of 
God. Another strong argument in favor 
of the Natural Law is its very definition, 
It is a law founded in nature by the 
Author of Nature and promulgated to 
man by the light of his natural reason. 
There is such a law in man. There- 
fore, there exists in man a Natural 
Moral Law. In the first place, the 
nature of the primary obligation by 
which we " do good and avoid evil " in- 
dicates that the law of our moral con- 
duct is founded in our rational nature. 
For this obligation is universal, affect- 
ing all men and all man's actions ; it is 
immutable ; it is independent of any in- 
dividual or multitude of human beings, 
and, therefore, essential to or founded 
in rational nature. It is an obligation 
from God, or the Author of Nature. 
For it emanates from a principle — the 
necessity of the moral order which has in 
view God Himself as last end, and which 
urges to the pursuit of this end on 
pain of the eternal loss of the Supreme 
Good. It emanates, therefore, from an 
expression in human nature of the 



THE NATURAL LAW. 



135 



Divine will or decree. And, finally, it 
is a law promulgated to man by the 
natural light of his reason. 

By the simple light of his reason, that 
is, by the sole consideration of his ra- 
tional nature in itself, and relatively to 
its destiny — in which sense we have 
shown it to be the proximate 
criterion of morality — man knows, with- 
out effort, that certain things are wrong 
and therefore to be avoided, that other 
things are good and therefore to be 
done. Thus, the moral and universal 
human phenomena of shame, mental un- 
rest, spiritual distress, fear, anxiety, 
horror, despair, in a word, the stings of 
Conscience, evince the fact that by the 
simple light of reason we profoundly 
understand that our conduct has run 
counter to some fundamental law of our 
nature. 

Thus, again, the ubiquitous persuasion 
among men that not only certain acts 
are good and certain other acts evil, 
but, further, that certain acts are pro- 
hibited and certain other acts com- 
manded, yet. independently of any 
divine or human positive law, indicates 



136 CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 

that, by the light of reason alone, we 
are aware of a law within us dictating 
certain conduct and proscribing a cer- 
tain other course of action. Now, this 
law founded in our rational nature, 
whose author is God and whose promul- 
gation is the light of our own reason, is 
what we understand by the Natural 
Moral Law. So that without pursuing 
the matter with further argument, we 
conclude that it is evident from the tes- 
timony of Conscience, from the fact of 
creation, and from the definition itself 
of Natural Law, that there exists in man 
such a principle as the Natural Moral 
Law. 

Now, it is from this principle in us, the 
Natural Moral Law, that our obligation 
to "do good and avoid evil" prox- 
imately arises. This was the second 
point in the proposition we enunciated 
above. There will be no difficulty in 
understanding this when we realize that, 
of a fact, this obligation or the disjunctive 
necessity bearing upon the will through 
the representations of the practical 
judgment and urging it to " do good 
and avoid evil " is nothing more or less 



THE NATURAL LAW. 



137 



than the first principle of the Natural 
Law. That there is a first principle of 
the Natural Law. there is no one. that I am 
aware of. who sincerely doubts. There 
is. however, a controversy as to what it 
really is as manifold as the diversity of 
opinion upon the criterion of morality, 
with which this principle is intimately 
akin. 

Among Catholic moralists, however, 
there exists no divergence greater 
than one touching the formulation of 
the principle. Ordinarily it is formu- 
lated with St. Thomas, thus: "The good 
is to be done and the evil avoided. v 
And in point of fact, the supreme prin- 
ciple of the Natural Law should exhib- 
it three leading features. It should (1) 
be a formally first principle, that is. ex- 
hibit the essence of law as law. or con- 
tain that which in every matter of law 
is. by itself and for its own sake, 
commanded or ordained; (2) it should 
be materially first or the most uni- 
versal of all principles, comprehend- 
ing- all the natural duties of man; and 
(3) known of itself with an evidence not 
borrowed from other principles. 



138 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



These features are verified in the prin- 
ciple we have enunciated. In the first 
place, it exhibits the essence of law as 
law. For the essence of Natural Law — 
upon which Positive Law is founded — is 
the safeguarding of morality in the ex- 
ercise of our free actions. It is the con- 
servation of that order or disposition of 
human nature towards the possession 
of the Infinite Good which is its last end ; 
from which the moral character of all 
human actions is derived. On the other 
hand, however, this order or disposition 
is then only insured when this principle, 
"good is to be done and evil avoided," 
is reduced to practice, or verified in 
action. It is, then, the principle which 
enunciates that which formally or essen- 
tially constitutes law, and in fact the 
Natural Law itself. It is, furthermore, 
materially the first principle, or that one 
in which all the natural duties of man 
are implicitly contained and upon which 
all other moral principles rest. For when 
we classify them, all the moral duties 
of man are embraced within the sphere 
of his relations to God, to himself, and 
to his fellowman either individually or 



THE NATURAL LAW. 



139 



collectively taken. The principles, or 
subordinate moral laws which govern 
him are but rules founded in the nature 
of these relations. 

Well, now. these relations themselves 
are but the totalitv or the sum of the 
various respects in which the rational 
nature of man may be viewed in order 
to its final end. the object which is im- 
plicitly aimed at in the just observance of 
all these relations. The principle, there- 
fore, which legislates for the right order- 
ing" of human nature in its totality or in 
every respect in which it may be con- 
sidered relatively to man's last end. of a 
necessity, contains impliedly all the 
laws which govern this nature in all its 
detailed relations or respects. Moreover, 
as man's subordinate natural duties are 
founded in these special laws or princi- 
ples, those too in consequence, are all con- 
tained in his supreme moral duty. Now 
this is. we know, to do all that will con- 
duce towards his final end. and to avoid 
everything which is calculated to prove 
an obstacle to its acquisition : that is. it is 
the principle of all order and law. " o-ood 
is to be done and evil to be avoided." 



140 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



That this same principle is self-reveal- 
ing and self-evident needs no illustration. 
It is the sense of mankind. Nobody more- 
over, denies it ; and being at the basis 
of all moral order and action, it be- 
comes as patent and self-evident as 
our rational nature itself, the directive 
principle of moral actions ; and this the 
more so, that it is implied in the cer- 
tainty and evidence of every other 
moral principle. " Good must be done 
and evil avoided " is, then, the first 
principle of the Natural Moral Law. 
That this first principle is identical with 
our moral obligation or the necessity we 
are under by our very nature, of doing 
good and avoiding evil, is quite evident. 
This necessity is the necessity of attain- 
ing to our final end, and of observing the 
order which God has instituted for real- 
izing the Infinite Good, by either freely 
seeking this end, fulfilling this order, and 
tending towards this good, or of eter- 
nally atoning for not doing so. Now, 
this is precisely the necessity enunciated 
in this first principle of the Natural 
Law. For this Good or final end is im- 
possible without doing good and avoid- 



THE NATURAL LAW. 



141 



ing evil. Hence, we conclude that, as 
we stated in our second proposition, 
our moral obligation is proximately 
founded in the Natural Moral Low. 

Yet, neither this first principle of the 
Natural Law and the obligation which 
is identical with it. nor the Natural 
Law itself, is absolute and final as an 
explanation of why we must ;< do good 
and avoid evil." These are in the cre- 
ated order, and. therefore, are not self- 
constituting, but suppose a law which 
is in every respect primary, independent, 
self-existing and universal. Such a law 
is what we understand by the Eternal 
Law existing in the mind and will of 
God. - 

St. Augustine defines it as The 
mind or will of God enjoining the 
conservation and forbidding the dis- 
turbance of the natural order ; " or in 
another place. " that supreme ordination 
of things in God which must always 
be obeyed." 

St. Thomas defines it as The princi- 
ple of the government of things existing 
in God. as the Ruler of the universe ; " 
or, ao^ain, as " The Divine Wisdom, in so 



142 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



far as it is conceived to be the directive 
principle of all the actions and move- 
ments of created things in their tendency 
toward their final end." 

So that when we come to analyze and 
define it in itself, the Eternal Law is an 
" ordination of the Divine Mind by 
which God, necessarily and from eter- 
nity, has decreed all things which He 
has created, to tend, conveniently with 
the natures which He has given them, to 
their appointed ends either in time or 
eternity." 

In this way the Eternal Law is the 
most universal of all laws. It embraces 
not merely the government of moral, that 
is rational, beings, but that also of 
physical nature, or irrational beings ; 
and even the direction of rational beings 
towards their supernatural end, on the 
supposition that God has founded the 
supernatural order. Like all law, the 
Eternal Law must be promulgated. Its 
promulgation is nothing else than the 
impression of this ordination upon the 
created natures governed by it, a pro- 
mulgation which is evinced by and 
recognized in the inborn and natural 



THE NATURAL LAW. 



143 



inclination of every created nature 
towards its own specific actions and 
ends, or — which is the same thing — its 
own specific perfection. This impres- 
sion is participated in two ways, accord- 
ing to the two broad classes of creatures. 
In irrational creatures it is participated 
irrationally, or by the instinctive phys- 
ical pursuit, without the power of self- 
direction, of these native inclinations. 
In rational creatures it is participated 
intellectually. By this we mean to say 
that the Eternal Law is in rational 
creatures not simply the gift of a created 
nature, which, without self-direction and 
freedom, pursues its native inclinations; 
but a rational and free nature, which 
not merely pursues like other creatures 
the inclinations impressed upon it by 
the Creator, but which so follows these 
inclinations that it is. itself, directive of 
its acts and movements and free to ex- 
ercise them as it is minded. 

Rational nature is. accordingly, an 
image, in the true sense, of the Divine 
Nature, inasmuch as it is a nature which, 
like the Divine Nature of which it is a 
participation, is self -directive and inde- 



144 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



pendent of any necessary determination 
in the exercise of its specific acts. From 
this, therefore, it follows that the Natural 
Law is, as St. Thomas puts it, but a 
participation, in the rational nature of 
man, of the Eternal Law. This partic- 
ipation, on the other hand, is concretely 
the nature itself of man, endowed, as it 
is, with its inborn self-direction and 
physical independence in the exercise of 
the activity through which it is to attain 
the ultimate end appointed for it by the 
Creator. From this intrinsic dependence, 
therefore, of the Natural Law upon the 
Eternal Law, or, better still, from this 
identity, through participation, of the 
Natural with the Eternal Law, it is as 
evident as it can be that the obligatory 
force of the Natural Law proceeds from 
the Eternal Law, or to go back to our 
definition of the Eternal Law, from the 
" creative ordination of all things exist- 
ing in the mind of God." So that, 
therefore, we may now state the entire 
doctrine of moral conduct in the follow- 
ing proposition: 

The motive or principle urging man 
to " do good and avoid evil " is, imme- 



THE NATURAL LAW. 



145 



diately, the disjunctive necessity of ob- 
serving the moral order, a necessity 
tchich is proximately identical v:ith the 
obligatory force of the Natural Law 
and which) in consequence, proceeds 
remotely and originally from the 
Etemcd Lav: of which the Natural Law 
is the promulgation and limited par- 
ticipation in the rationed nature of man. 

In view, therefore, of the Eternal 
Law from which all created obligation 
finally arises, Emmanuel Kant's auton- 
omy of the will, or his doctrine of the 
will as an absolute law to itself, is evi- 
dently false. Kant's theory of moral 
obligation is coordinate with his doc- 
trine of the Moral Standard. His 
moral criterion, as we have seen, is con- 
formity with the Supreme Moral Law or 
the Categoric Imperative. 

This supreme law, in its turn, is the 
dictate of pure reason, or the abiding, 
inborn and unconditional command of 
the reason to act reasonably, that is, to 
act simply and solely out of reverence 
for reason and for nothing within or 
without reason, above or below reason. 
This, of course, constitutes human rea- 

C. E — 10 



146 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



son the final source of all moral obliga- 
tion; and by divorcing moral obligation 
from God and therefore from religion, 
it sets up an entirely lay-morality or, 
which is the same thing, it eliminates 
from the idea of conduct any relation to 
God, religion and Church. 

Moreover, by making the individual 
will autonomous, that is, by constituting 
the sum of its rectitude and goodness 
in a reverence for the dictate of the in- 
dividual reason alone, it lays the founda- 
tion of Individualism, the root and 
ground-principle of the present almost 
universal tendency to Anarchy. 

And, again, it must and has resulted 
in a theoretic and practical, moral scep- 
ticism. For it is impossible, even theo- 
retically, and a fortiori practically, to 
determine what is pure reverence for the 
Moral Law which Kant sets down as the 
only motive for doing good and avoiding 
evil. So that a universal, theoretical 
and practical doubt as to whether he 
has ever performed a morally good act 
is necessarily the universal lot of man. 
Nay, this autonomy undermines the 
very concept of moral obligation. Obli- 



THE NATURAL LAW. 



147 



gation carries with it the idea of a bond 
whose essential aim is the proper ordi- 
nation of the rational creature to its ap- 
pointed end or destiny. Well, now, the 
rational creature cannot create this bond, 
for the simple reason that it is not its 
own ordinator. And it is not its own 
ordinator for that other twofold and 
simple reason that it is not its own 
founder nor creator, nor its own end- 
giver or the assigner of its own destiny. 

The root, accordingly, of the Kantian 
error, is that it ignores the fact that man 
is a creature; and that, therefore, he is 
no more an end in himself, than he is a 
beginning in himself. It ignores in 
consequence that, therefore, everything 
in him is relative, the terms of the re- 
lation being' himself — his reason and 
will — on the one hand, and all other 
thing's and God. on the other. To God 
his relation is that of a rational creature 
to its last end; to all other things it is 
the relation of this rational creature to 
the means of attaining to God. Their use 
is a necessity, for the end is necessary. 
The manner of their use is governed 
by the disjunctive necessity of the 



148 CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 

moral order, that is by the necessity of 
either so using, them as to attain to God, 
or of suffering the eternal penalty of their 
abuse. This necessity and obligatory 
force is. itself, founded in the universal 
Law of Nature ; that is, it is identical on 
the one hand with the divinely impressed 
inclination of all creatures to elicit the 
acts and carry forward the movements 
which will bring them to their respec- 
tive ends or perfections, and, on the 
other, with the divinely impressed in- 
clination upon man's intellectual nature, 
of eliciting acts and movements of his 
own and of using the acts and move- 
ments of all other creatures in such wise 
that they will further his own last end. 

This Natural Law, finally, and the 
obligatory force founded in it proceed 
from the Divine Will or Eternal Law of 
God Who created all things, appointed 
to each its own end and perfection, and 
governs the movement of each by fixed 
laws impressed upon their natures, and 
made manifest in the character of the acts 
and movements by which each tends 
towards its specific perfection and final 
destiny. 



Lecture Fourth 



(149) 



THE 

Tribunal of Conscience 

OR 

The Indicidual Arbiter in Moral 
Conduct 

TN my two previous lectures I treated 
® successively of the principle by 
which we are to judge of the moral 
goodness or evil of a human action, and 
of the obligation of the Natural Law 
urging us to perform morally good 
actions and to avoid morally evil acts. 
But it is one thing to understand spec- 
ulatively what is a good, what is an 
evil action, and to realize that, accord- 
ing to the Divine Will expressed in the 
Natural Law, we are obliged to " do 
good and avoid evil ; " and quite an- 
other thing to apply this knowledge 
and obligatory law to our own indi- 
vidual actions. 

That the obligatory force of the Nat- 
ural Law, and, through it, the obligation 

151 



152 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



of the Positive Law, may exert itself to 
bind the individual, it is not enough 
that the law be promulgated by the 
legislator. It must further come to the 
knowledge of the subject. It comes to 
the knowledge of the subject through 
the individual Conscience. Hence, the 
individual Conscience is the proximate, 
formative principle of human conduct. 
I am to treat of this principle in the 
present lecture, dwelling, in the first 
place, upon the nature, phases and au- 
thority of Conscience; secondly, upon 
its relation to the moral and supernatural 
virtues; and, thirdly, upon the character 
which it imparts to human actions. 

The term Conscience has been di- 
versely employed. Some confound it 
with the act of consciousness or the 
act by which we are made aware of 
our existence, of our thinking, of our act- 
ing or, in general, of our being disposed 
interiorly. Others make it out to be the 
soul itself as self-conscious. Hence, 
they speak of a clean Conscience or an 
impure Conscience. Others, again, sig- 
nify by Conscience our habitual recog- 
nition of the most universal moral prin- 



THE TRIBUNAL OF CONSCIENCE. 153 



ciples, as that we must worship God, 
honor our parents, and not do to another 
that which we would not wish to have 
done to ourselves. 

Strictly speaking, however, Christian 
moralists understand by the moral Con- 
science a judgment of the practical or 
moral reason upon the licitness or illicit- 
ness of an individual action or of its 
omission. 

Conscience is not, then, as some writers 
would awkwardly suppose, the soul it- 
self, except, perhaps, in a figurative 
sense as poets and orators are wont, in 
warmth or apostrophe, to designate it. 
For a like reason, it is not a faculty, or 
rather, it is no other faculty than that of 
the reason; for faculties are determined, 
both in their number and kind, by their 
specific objects. If these are many and 
essentially different, the faculties differ 
essentially and are multiplied accord- 
ing to the number of specific objects. 
This is not the case here. For Con- 
science turns upon and deals with truth. 

Truth is the formal object of reason, 
which either apprehends, judges or 
ratiocinates upon it. Their essential 



154 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



objects being identical, Conscience and 
reason are alike objectively, and there- 
fore one and the same faculty. The 
fact that Conscience deals with moral 
truth is no difficulty. Its morality 
is only an accident or modification of 
truth, and will not, accordingly, have 
any other effect than to distinguish the 
act by which reason attains to moral 
truth to be accidentally different from 
the acts by which the same reason 
arrives at other modifications of truth, 
such as logical truth, mathematical 
truth, metaphysical, economic or polit- 
ical truth. 

Conscience is, then, an act by which 
my reason applies the ethical standard 
and the obligation of the Natural Law to 
the position or omission of my individual 
acts. We may define it to be a judg- 
ment of the practical reason finally dic- 
tating that this action is to be performed 
because it is commanded ; that this ac- 
tion is to be avoided because it is for- 
bidden ; or that this action is left to my 
own option, because it is neither com- 
manded nor forbidden, but permitted or 
only approved of or commended. 



THE TRIBUNAL OF CONSCIENCE. 155 

Defining it, however, still more briefly. 
Conscience is a judgment dictating to us 
the licitness or illicitness of any given ac- 
tion. It is evident, however, from the 
very definition of Conscience that it is 
not. in its integrity, a simple, but rather 
a complex, act. It is a syllogistic act or 
act of ratiocination. Analyzing it very 
closely, we observe that in its entirety it 
consists in that activity of the reasoning 
power in us by which the difformitv or 
conformity of a given action in the in- 
dividual with the general law. is set 
forth. 

That it exhibits a syllogistic feature 
appears from the fact that the act of 
Conscience consists, in its adequateness 
or taken for all that it implies, of a 
major premise in which the general law 
in the matter is presented to the will ; 
as in these cases, for instance : " A lie 
is forbidden." " Theft is forbidden." 
"To bear false witness is not allowed." 
In the minor premise it is then enunci- 
ated that the act under deliberation 
comes under this general law. Thus: 
" But this answer, this statement under 
deliberation, is or is not a lie ; this act 



156 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



of appropriation is or is not theft ; this 
testimony is or is not false witness." 
From these premises the conclusion is 
gathered which is the formal or charac- 
teristic act of the Conscience. " There- 
fore, this answer or statement is or is not 
permitted, this act of appropriation is or 
is not licit, this testimony may or may 
not be given." Hence, it appears as a 
first thesis or proposition in this matter 
that : 

The Moral Conscience is not the 
soul, nor any of its faculties, but an act 
of the practical reason declaring the 
licitness or illicitness of a given indi- 
vidual act. 

The phases, or the divisions of the 
Conscience, as they are not unfrequently 
termed, are several. 

To begin with, it is quite evident that 
the act of the will to which the applica- 
tion of the Moral Law is made, may be 
a past, present or future action. In the 
case of a past action, it is clear enough 
that the application of the law follows 
the position or omission of the act, and 
that, therefore, the Conscience, which 
deals with actions which the individual 



THE TRIBUNAL OF CONSCIENCE. 157 



has performed or omitted, is the conse- 
quent Conscience. 

It is very often referred to, also, as the 
approving or accusing, the defending or 
excusing, Conscience. The designations 
are taken from the result of the applica- 
tion of the moral law to the deeds we 
have done. From this application it 
will appear either that these acts were 
in accordance with the law. and then 
Conscience approves them ; or it will 
appear that they were at outs with the 
law, and then our Conscience accuses 
us of them \ or, finally, it will appear 
that they were permitted by the law, 
and consequently our Conscience de- 
fends or at least excuses them. This 
process of the application of the law to 
our past action is what is known among 
moralists and ascetics as the examina- 
tion of the Conscience. The consequent 
Conscience is not, however, the arbiter 
or regulator of individual conduct, ex- 
cept, perhaps, in as far as the experience 
of the past serves as a lesson for the 
conduct of the future. 

The formative Conscience or the guid- 
ing principle of individual conduct is 



158 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



the antecedent Conscience. It is called 
antecedent inasmuch as it is a practical 
moral judgment about a present or 
future act which precedes the actual exer- 
cise of the act, declaring, as it were, to the 
will that said act should be done, or should 
not be done, or that we are free to per- 
form it or not, according to our option. 

For this reason, the antecedent Con- 
science is often termed the imperative 
Conscience, the prohibitory, permissive 
or the soliciting Conscience. This diver- 
sity of nomenclature is derived from the 
attitude of the moral law as applied to 
our several human acts. For at one time 
the law commands these acts, at an other 
it prohibits them, again it simply permits 
their exercise or even solicits the will to 
perform such in preference to other 
actions. Now, the antecedent Con- 
science, or this act by which we apply 
the moral law to our present or future 
actions, naturally takes on, or is essen- 
tially subject to, three distinct relations 
giving rise to several other phases or 
divisions of Conscience. 

Thus, we may, in analyzing the judicial 
act of Conscience, look at its conformity 



THE TRIBUNAL OF CONSCIENCE. 159 

or difformity with the law it applies. 
If it conforms to it, it is said to be a 
true or a right Conscience; if it fails to 
conform, it is a wrong or false Con- 
science. 

The explanation of the distinction lies 
in this. If our moral judgment declares 
that to be licit or illicit, ichich, in itself, 
and independently of our individual view 
of it, is licit or illicit, our Conscience 
is right, that is, in accord with the nature 
of things, or it is true, that is, represents 
things as they really are. 

If, on the contrary, Conscience repre- 
sents as licit that which is illicit, and 
illicit that which is licit, it is a wrong 
Conscience, not being in conformity with 
things, and false, because it does not rep- 
resent things as they really are. This 
error may, of course, be culpable or not, 
vincible or invincible. 

In this alternative we shall have a 
vincibly or invincibly erroneous, culp- 
ably or inculpably erroneous Con- 
science, accordingly as the error could 
have been set aside or could not. or is 
due to our own fault or free from any 
guilt on our part. 



160 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



In the second place, we may, in study- 
ing the judgment of Conscience, look at 
the firmness of the internal assent which 
we give to the practical conclusion ar- 
rived at by Moral Reason or, as we may 
call it, the faculty of the Conscience. 
Described from this standpoint, Con- 
science may be certain, it may be doubt- 
fid, and, finally, it may be a probable 
Conscience. 

The distinction existing between these 
different states of assent to the judgment 
of Conscience arises from the degree to 
which fear of the contradictory judg- 
ment has been excluded. Thus, in a cer- 
tain Conscience, no fear whatever, that 
is, no hesitation prompted by the truth, 
or value of the contradictory judg- 
ment, is mingled with our assent to our 
moral judgment. My Conscience, for 
instance, dictates to me with certainty 
that to steal this man's watch is wrong, 
because I do not at all fear that the 
contradictory judgment — to steal this 
man's watch is not wrong — is or can be 
true. 

Acting under the dictate of such 
a Conscience, is to act with a certain 



THE TRIBUNAL OF CONSCIENCE. 161 

Conscience. If. however, I have any fear 
that the contradictory judgment is or 
may be true, my Conscience for this rea- 
son is not certain, but doubtful. In this 
case, pending the removal of my doubt. 
I must suspend my moral judgment. I 
cannot act until the doubt has been 
removed. The doubt, however, may be 
negative or positive. It is negative, 
when I have no reasons for assenting to 
the affirmative, vet. on the other hand, 
no reasons for assenting to the negative 
of contradictory propositions or judg- 
ments. It is a positive doubt, when I 
have reasons for and against following 
the judgment of my Conscience. 

A negatively doubtful Conscience is 
practically no Conscience at all. and a 
person with such a Conscience may act or 
not act as his liberty or obligation preced- 
ing such a doubt prompted him or re- 
quired him to act. Thus a person doubts 
whether he may read a certain book. 
On thinking the matter over carefully, 
he finds no reasons whatever why he may 
read, yet none whatever why he may 
not read. He is free to read or not. as 
he chooses. Again, there is a strict 

C. E. — 11 



162 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



obligation to pay a just debt. Upon 
mature examination in every direction, I 
have no reason whatever to think that I 
paid it, none whatever that I did not pay 
it. The doubt is purely negative, and as 
it does not destroy the moral certainty of 
the obligation, the obligation remains 
as it was previous to the doubt, and I 
must pay the debt. 

With a positively doubtful Conscience, 
however, it is not permitted to act. The 
doubt must first be set aside by exami- 
nation, consultation or some other means 
by which a certain Conscience is formed. 
Hence, to illustrate, should a person 
have positive reasons why he should not 
read a given book, he cannot read it, 
although he has also positive reasons why 
he should read it. His Conscience is 
positively doubtful. It must be made 
certain. For it is wrong to act, except 
with a certain Conscience. 

Finally, the assent to a moral judg- 
ment may be given, but with a prudent 
fear of the truth of the contradictory 
judgment. This is a probable Con- 
science. It differs from a doubtful Con- 
science inasmuch as it involves a judg- 



THE TRIBUNAL OF CONSCIENCE. 163 

ment, whereas a doubtful Conscience 
does not. When there is question of 
the licitness or illicitness alone of an 
action, a probable Conscience is a safe 
Conscience, and can be followed, inas- 
much as no law governing the licitness 
or illicitness of an action is certain, if 
there is a strong and true probability 
militating against it. 

In the third place, Conscience may be 
viewed from the standpoint of the 
habit which it induces in the soul. 
And thus we have, finally, a tender, a 
lax, a scrupulous, a perplexed Con- 
science. His Conscience is tender, who 
in every action, even those of minor 
moment, is wont to diligently inquire 
into, and to accurately determine the 
licitness or illicitness of an action, and 
to abide in each act by such judgment. 
His, on the contrary, is a lax Conscience, 
who rashly and for slight reasons every- 
where, concludes that there exists no ob- 
ligation, or that there is at least no 
grievous evil involved in his conduct. 
On the other hand, a person who for 
trifling reasons sees and fears sin where 
there is no sin, or sees grievous sin where 



164 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



there exists at most but a venial fault, 

has a scrupulous Conscience, whereas 
finally, he possesses a perplexed Con- 
science, who judges it wrong to do a 
given act and at the same time wrong to 
omit its performance. So that, to sum up 
in one thesis the various phases or divi- 
sions of the Conscience, we state that: 

The Conscience, in reference to its con- 
formity with the moral law, is right or 
wrong, true or false; in reference to the 
assent we give to its judgment, it is cer- 
tain, doubtful, or probable; while in 
reference to the habits it induces 
in the soul, it may be tender, lax, scru- 
pulous or perplexed. 

The authority of Conscience, which 
we were to speak of after its definition 
and divisions, is proportionate to the 
obligation existing to follow its dic- 
tates. This obligation may be stated in 
the following proposition: 

Provided it is morally certain, Con- 
science is the proximate rule of conduct, 
which we are at liberty to follow if it 
is permissive, but which we must follow 
tohen it commands or forbids an action 
or course of conduct. 



THE TRIBUNAL OF CONSCIENCE. 



165 



The reason underlying this doctrine 
is simple enough. For the will is a 
blind faculty. It, therefore, needs 
direction. Reason, on the other hand, 
is the natural guide of the will. Its 
direction lies in the law, which it pro- 
poses to the will for its guidance. Yet 
the mere proposition or promulgation of 
the law is not a sufficient direction for a 
faculty which elicits or imperates our 
human actions. 

A more specific, proximate and sub- 
jective rule is called for, dealing with 
each human action as it occurs to be 
performed or omitted by its individual, 
human agent. Such a rule is, of 
course, the application of the general 
law to each particular action. Now, 
this is the application made by that 
judgment or act of our moral or prac- 
tical reason, which we have called 
the Conscience. It is more specific, 
being the application of the general 
law to the individual act. It is a more 
proximate rule, for it is the general law 
promulgated to the individual will. 

It is, finally, a subjective and internal 
rule inasmuch as it is an act of the 



166 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



moral or practical judgment, indicating 
the conformity or non-conformity of 
each human act with the moral law. 
iiccordingly, Conscience is the ultimate 
rule and final tribunal of conduct. 
When, therefore, it permits, we may 
securely follow it; when, however it 
commands or forbids, we must adjust 
our conduct to it, if we would remain 
within the moral order. 

However, the judgment of Conscience 
must be at least morally certain, before 
it can be looked upon as the rule and 
proximate law of conduct. By this we 
mean to say that it is necessary, before 
we act, to know that the action or its 
omission is licit and that the action or 
its omission is obligatory. We must be 
at least morally certain that the action 
or its omission is the object of some 
law. prohibiting or commanding one or 
the other. 

To fail to do at least so much and 
vet, conscious of this negligence, to 
proceed with the act, is practically a 
contempt both of the law and the law- 
giver. To act or omit to act through such 
a motive or in such a state of cultivated 



THE TRIBUNAL OF CONSCIENCE. 



167 



or fostered ignorance, clearly and of 
itself, renders the action morally evil. 
No law, on the other hand, is binding, 
which is not known as a law, and more- 
over known to certainly exist and to be 
certainly binding. A doubtful law is 
not obligatory. Now the law is ulti- 
mately and completely promulgated to 
the individual as certain both in its 
existence and its force, through the 
certainty with which it is proposed to 
him. or exists in his moral conscious- 
ness by its application through his Con- 
science or moral judgment to any of 
his individual acts. 

Asa consequence, therefore, the oblig- 
atory force of Conscience depends upon 
the fact of its moral certainty. More- 
over, moral certainty, as opposed to 
physical or metaphysical certainty, is 
sufficient. In fact, no other certainty in 
moral matters is possible but that which 
excludes every prudent doubt. 

The certainty attainable in concrete 
moral matters is not like the certainty 
on which principles themselves of moral 
conduct are founded, absolute and 
metaphysical. For our assent to these 



168 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



concrete moral judgment does not 
re^t solely upon the abstract, the nec- 
essary, and the essential, but also, and in 
as large a measure, upon the relative, that 
is, the concrete circumstances in which 
the general principles or laws of con- 
duct are, in each individual act. always 
diversely embodied. This concrete ap- 
plication depends, in fact, upon a thou- 
sand things which are not involved in 
the general principles, and which it 
would be impossible to forestall in the 
abstract theory of moral acts. Yet these 
are the very things which must inevitably 
enter into the conditions and contin- 
gent existence of each individual 
action. 

While, therefore, it is absolutely nec- 
essary that Conscience in its role of the 
ultimate rule of moral conduct must be 
at least morally certain, it is at the 
same time equally true that moral cer- 
tainty, or that certainty which excludes 
all prudent doubt and exhibits every 
motive to elicit the assent of a prudent 
man, is amply sufficient to constitute 
Conscience a safe and well-appointed 
guide in moral action. 



THE TRIBUNAL OF CONSCIENCE. JflQ 



However, Conscience, let its authority 
be what it will, cannot, unsupported, 
render man's conduct always and every- 
where morally right. Conscience is an 
efficacious law securing conformity 
with the moral order only where man 
is disposed to follow its dictate con- 
stantly, promptly, and with an inborn or 
acquired relish for acting conformably 
to reason. 

Now, the moral virtues alone cre- 
ate and preserve this threefold dis- 
position. This we know, first of all, 
from the very definition of a virtue. 
Virtues, says St. Thomas, are habits in- 
clining the mind and will to acts con- 
formable to reason. But, apart even 
from the definition of virtue, it must be 
very evident to anyone that, where the 
mind and will are disinclined through 
passion and vice to acts conformable to 
reason, it is a practical impossibility for 
Conscience to maintain human conduct 
in harmony with the moral order. This 
truth makes the moral virtues a neces- 
sary condition for moral rectitude in con- 
duct. For the elementary dispositions 
for preserving moral rectitude are three: 



170 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



First, uniformity in our way of act- 
ing. There can be no moral stability 
where fickleness and uncertainty control 
our methods of action. 

Secondly, promptitude in the pursuit 
of moral rectitude in our actions. Where 
indecision, doubt, hesitation, inquisition, 
characterize our every act, moral motives 
lose their force, passion is allowed to 
come into play, precepts and the force 
of obligations are obscured or relax 
their energy, and moral conduct is 
either jeopardized or at least rendered 
inconstant. 

Thirdly, a relish for rational or 
moral conduct and a satisfaction in 
its pursuit. Nothing is so stable and 
preserving in man's conduct as that 
which is done with a native relish and 
satisfaction. Moral conduct becomes, 
in this way, the outcome of a natural 
impulse and, like nature itself in us, is 
abiding and immutable. 

Now, the moral virtues alone will se- 
cure this uniformity, promptitude and 
moral relish. This becomes evident from 
a brief survey of the home forces at work 
in man's moral economy. There are four 



THE TRIBUNAL OF CONSCIENCE. 171 



such forces invariably concerned in the 
activity of man's moral life. These are 
his reason, his will, his concupiscible 
appetite or his sensuality, and his iras- 
cible appetite or what is better known 
as his temper. 

The moral disposition of reason is se- 
cured and safeguarded by prudence^ 
whose constituent features are good 
council, correctness of judgment with 
discernment, whose concomitant and 
preserving virtues are mindfulness, in- 
telligence, foresight, docility, circum- 
spection, and an uninterrupted caution 
over one's thoughts, words and ac- 
tions. 

The will receives its proper moral dis- 
position from the virtue of justice. Jus- 
tice, it is hardly necessary to say, is "a 
constant and abiding inclination in the 
will to render to every one his due," as 
well in his individual as in his social 
relations. 

It is termed legal justice, when its end 
is to subordinate the distributive will, or 
will of every member of the communitv. 
to the law providing for the good of the 
community. 



172 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



It is denominated commutative jus- 
tice when it inclines the will to the ob- 
servance of a strict equilibrium be- 
tween the rights of one and the duties 
of another. 

And, finally, we call it distributive 
justice when it inclines the individual 
will — especially of those in authority — 
to fairness in the meting out of rewards 
and punishments and the apportionment 
of civil favors and burdens. 

To it, as to their natural spring, we 
trace the virtues of religion, filial piety, 
patriotism, obedience to rightly consti- 
tuted authority, gratitude, veracity, rev- 
erence for authority, and our natural 
admiration and service of excellence, 
dignity, honor and worth in any line. 

Temperance, the third in the order of 
moral virtues, is the moral health of the 
sensual appetite. Its aim is to subordi- 
nate the sensual propensities and traits 
to the conduct of reason. It is not a 
name for an isolated virtue. In its train, 
and doing its work by parts, are, first, 
the virtues of abstinence, sobriety, and 
all those moderate habits which conduce 
to the conservation of the individual na- 



THE TRIBUNAL OF CONSCIENCE, 1 73 

ture; secondly, chastity, purity, and those 
other moral restraints necessary to the 
conservation of the species itself ; while 
annexed to temperance, and aiming at 
the same moral disposition of the will 
coupled to the passions and our lower 
nature, are continency, humility, meek- 
ness, modesty, thriftiness. austerity, 
simplicity, and that grace of soul which 
comes of manners and culture. 

Finally, vafortitude we have that com- 
plete equipment of disposition which is 
to support Conscience in the uniform con- 
trol of the will and in the unfailing 
security of morally good as opposed to 
morally evil conduct, Fortitude is mid- 
way between timidity and audacity, and 
is a streno'th in the soul to undergo 
labors, dangers, adversity, difficulties, 
with intrepidity, for the success of a 
o;ood cause. It differs, therefore, from 
timidity, which shrinks from these things, 
inasmuch as fortitude is. if necessary, 
boldly aggressive. It is distinguished, 
on the other hand, from audacity inas- 
much as it implies a moderation in all 
things, which audacity lacks or neglects. 
Fortitude, therefore, besides a number 



174 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



of minor moral forces, calls into inces- 
sant play those great staying energies 
of the soul, magnanimity, patience, and 
the crown of all human endeavors, the 
virtue of perseverance in good begun. 

However, while it is true that uniform 
moral action without the guidance and re- 
staint of Conscience is a graceful fiction, 
and while, on the other hand, it is 
equally true that Conscience is handi- 
capped without the aid of the great car- 
dinal virtues, it is just as certain that 
these same cardinal virtues. to be genuine, 

' O 7 

must be informed, that is, animated by re- 
ligion. 

There is no virtue where there is no 
living conformity to the rational order 
of things. Xow. the rational order, if it 

O 7 7 

connotes anything, connotes and even 
essentially imports religion, or what is 
tantamount, the recognition, profession 
and acting out of our universal de- 
pendence upon God. for there is no gen- 
uine virtue where there is no moral con- 
formity out of love and reverence for 
God's service, a conformity which implies 
a love and reverence for God him- 
self, or the exercise of the essential acts 



THE TRIBUNAL OE CONSCIENCE. 175 



of all religion. Virtues not founded 
upon religion are but "splendid vices " 
— to use the censure of St. Augustine. 

Furthermore — although it seems su- 
perfluous to state it — genuine virtue is 
impossible in the present or actual prov- 
idence of God under which man is 

livincr. unless animated with the Chris- 
es ' 

tian religion. For in the order of the 
providence in which man now lives, no 
other religion is sanctioned by God but 
the Christian religion. Therefore, no 
virtues but Christian virtues, however 
superior they may be in the moral order, 
are acceptable to God and meritorious 
or salutary as dispositions of man's soul, 
or as features perfecting his activity 
towards the successful attainment of his 
last end. 

This must be so. For these features, 
these dispositions, these virtues, must be 
supernatural; that is. they must corre- 
spond to the order in which man now 
exists relatively to his last end. This 
order is the supernatural order, founded 
in the revelation and mysteries of the 
Christian Religion. For divine revelation 
has infallibly established that man's last 



176 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



end is supernatural, and is, and from the 
beginning was, the vision of the Divine 
Essence. Man's motives of action are 
therefore to be supernatural, that is, 
they are to be motives drawn not from 
the uncertain light of reason alone, but 
from reason illumined by the clearer 
and more certain light of faith. 

Moreover, in virtue of the divine Re- 
demption, man's aids are now not simply 
the powers of nature alone, but nature 
strengthened by the grace of Christ's 
sacraments and the theological virtues of 
faith, hope and charity, added to the 
value of the supernaturalized cardinal 
virtues. 

Finally, in virtue of the divine insti- 
tution of Christ's Church, the integral 
guide of man's activity, of his facul- 
ties, of his soul, is not in the present 
order the unaided direction of the Con- 
science alone, but over and above 
the divinely commissioned, external 
authority of the true Church, teaching 
an infallible doctrine and enforcing the 
completest code of moral, ascetic and 
mystical principles, laws, counsels, for 
the direction, sanctification and super- 



THE TRIBUNAL OF CONSCIENCE. 177 



natural perfection of human activity 
and through it human conduct. 

From the relation of Conscience to 
the free will of man, that is, to the 
formal moral principle of human acts, 
flow the two leading 1 concrete features of 
every moral act — its imputability and 
its power to merit or to demerit. For, 
while Conscience, with all the force of 
the law whose application and concrete 
expression it is, commands, forbids, di- 
rects, and thus adjusts our single actions 
to the moral standard, urging to good 
and restraining from evil ; it, neverthe- 
less, in every single action, leaves the 
will of man physically free. Man's will 
can, if it choose, heed or not heed the 
voice of Conscience. In this physical 
freedom of the will under the direction 
of Conscience, resides the formal char- 
acter or the root of moral imputability, 
which is an essential feature of every 
moral act. 

Imputability, in its wider sense, is 
not. of course, the imputabilitv with 
which we are here dealing. In this 
wide sense, imputability is the attri- 
bution of an action to an ao-ent. sim- 
c. E. — 12 



178 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



ply as to its cause. And in this wide 
acceptation, even necessary actions are 
imputable, because they are attributable 
to their necessary causes. In this way, 
we attribute the burning of a house to 
fire, the death of a person to the sick- 
ness of which he perished. Of this ini- 
putability, I say, we are not now speak- 
ing. The iinputability of moral actions, 
or moral imputability, is the attribution 
of an action to its moral agent for his 
blame or praise. Such an attribution 
is evidently founded in the physical 
liberty of the agent. 

We cannot praise or blame an individ- 
ual for an action which he was not free to 
perform or not to perform. Hence, the 
moral imputability of an action has its 
root in the physical liberty of the agent ; 
hence, too, every moral action is imput- 
able, because every moral action is a free 
action ; hence, finally, every moral act 
is imputable for praise or blame, for it 
is imputable as a good action or as an 
evil action. 

Furthermore, the fact that the im- 
putability of an action is founded in 
the liberty of the agent, leads on to 



THE TRIBUNAL OF CONSCIENCE. 179 

and evinces the further truth that, what- 
ever adds to or curtails the liberty of an 
agent, or at least the liberty of any one 
of his actions, that very same thing*, for 
that very reason, and in just so far, em- 
phasizes or minimizes the imputability of 
that particular action. Thus, ignorance, 
passion, fear, coercion, habits, affect 
the imputability of an action, because 
they affect its liberty, Antecedent icr- 
norance touching* the nature of an 
action, takes away its liberty ; the action 
which results is not. in consequence, 
morally imputable. Previous passion, 
however, unless it destroys reason, does 
not neutralize the freedom of an act, 
and, accordingly, actions committed in 
normal passion are imputable. Passion 
does, nevertheless, tend to lessen the lib- 
erty of an act. It, in consequence, les- 
sens its imputability. Violence, if abso- 
lute, destroys the liberty of an action, 
hence, too, its imputability ; while the 
habits or the customs acquired by the 
agent do not remove the imputability of 
an act; because, be they ever so inveter- 
ate, they leave the physical liberty of the 
agent intact. 



180 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



Again, not only the act itself is 
imputable, but all effects connected 
with the action are, equally with 
the act itself, imputable to the agent, 
whenever they may and should be con- 
sidered as freely elected through or in 
the act itself. They are then voluntary 
and free in their cause, as we say, which 
is the free act with which they are con- 
nected. 

And, finally, not simply the agent's 
own actions are imputable to him, 
but the acts of others may likewise 
be morally imputed to him. If he 
can be the voluntary and free cause or 
co-cause of another's action — and he 
can positively and negatively — that 
action is imputable to him, in so far as 
he cooperated in it positively or nega- 
tively. Thus, he cooperates positively 
in another's action, who (1) orders it, 
( 2 ) counsels it, ( 3 ) consents to it, 
(4) praises the author of it, (5) 
harbors him and lends him succor. 
While he (1) whose silence gives ap- 
probation to the deed, (2) who does 
not, when he easily could without any 
evil to himself prevent the action, and 



THE TRIBUNAL OF CONSCIENCE. 181 

(3) who refuses to reveal the author of 
an act, when it is his duty to do so, is a 
negative cause of the action, and, ac- 
cordingly, of the consequences which 
follow from it as from their natural 
source. 

From the liberty and imputability of 
an action which has been exercised 
under the guidance of Conscience, we 
easilv deduce its capacity for merit or 
demerit, the second leading feature of 
every moral act. The process of this 
deduction is natural and plain, when we 
have familiarized ourselves with the ideas 
themselves of merit and demerit. 

These ideas are, we believe, familiar 
enough practically if not speculatively. 
Taking them up, therefore, in this latter 
sense, merit, first of all, is the exigency to 
be rewarded, inherent in a good action. 
In the case of demerit, it is, in the same 
way, an exigencv. or rather an unfitness 
in the action, deserving to be punished. 
The nature of this exigency, and there- 
fore of merit, lies in the character of the 
conditions upon which its existence de- 
pends, for in order that an action carry 
along with it that value, which we call 



182 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



merit, five conditions are generally re- 
puted necessary. 

In the first place, the action must be 
morally good. For it stands to reason 
that evil is to be punished, not re- 
warded. 

Secondly, the meritorious action must 
be free. An action, which we are forced 
to do, or which by nature we necessarily 
do. is not, in so far at least, deserving of 
reward. Such an action is not morally 
imputable to the agent, whereas imput- 
ability lies at the root of both merit 
and demerit. 

It must, in the third place, be pro- 
ductive of good to him by whom it 
is to be rewarded. This condition 
for merit grows, again, out of the fact 
that it must be imputable not as an 
evil or as an indifferent action, but im- 
putable as a good and praiseworthy ac- 
tion. 

Fourthly, this morally good, free 
and beneficent act must be received by 
the remunerator as meritorious. For 
while an action may be, considered in 
itself, very worthy of reward and may 
be, therefore, in the fitness of things or 



THE TRIBUNAL OF CONSCIENCE. 183 



congruously, as we say, meritorious, that 
is such an act that it is proper and be- 
coming that it should be rewarded ; yet 
it does not demand to be rewarded, or 
as we again say, it is not condignly 
meritorious unless he in whose favor 
it has been performed receives it as a 
meritorious act. It is this acceptation — 
an obligation or species of obligation 
on the part of the remunerator — which 
founds the condignity of the act or its 
exigency to be rewarded, and which, 
therefore, constitutes the integral note or 
character of its merit. 

Finally, an action that is meritorious 
must not be due in justice, for then it 
is an obligation; nor performed in view 
of a favor previously received, inasmuch 
as it would then be a return for a favor 
received. 

An action, therefore, in which, 
these five conditions are verified, is in 
every sense a meritorious action. De- 
merit, on the other hand, exists when- 
ever an action is morally evil ; where it 
is further freely perpetrated; and thirdly, 
where it results in the gratuitous detri- 
ment or evil of another. It is then deor- 



184 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



dinate, imputable, but imputable to the 
blame of its agent — three features, which 
constitute a natural and sufficient basis 
for the exigency or demand for punish- 
ment in such an action. 

It is evident. I think, from this brief 
analysis of merit and demerit, that man 
can, by his moral actions, merit or 
demerit before God and his fellowman. 
That he can merit or demerit before his 
fellowman, offers certainly no difficulty. 

We can merit or demerit before whom- 
soever our actions are imputable to us, 
and promote a gain or entail a loss to 
another which is not already and in 
every sense due or incurred in the order 
of strict justice. An action of this sort 
is everywhere, even with the rudest of 
men, deserving of reward or punish- 
ment. This everybody sees. 

The difficulty is felt to arise when 
there is question of merit or demerit 
before God. Yet. even here, in as 
far as merit is concerned, no diffi- 
culty can possibly exist. For even 
before God, man can and does perform 
actions morally good or conformable 
to the moral order; secondly, actions, 



THE TRIBUNAL OF CONSCIENCE. 185 



which are entirely and physically free; 
since, as we have taught in the preced- 
ing and in the present lecture, neither 
the Natural Law nor the voice of Con- 
science does away with man's physical 
freedom of choice and action. 

These same actions are or can be a 
good to God. They can promote His 
extrinsic honor and glory, the only 
good man can render to God. For as 
he who violates the law offends the 
ruler ; so he who observes His law 
honors the Supreme Ruler. Moreover, 
God has, from the beginning, accepted 
man's actions as meritorious, for, by 
creating him, God ordained man for 
a perfect happiness whose posses- 
sion He has, by the voice of the 
rational nature with which He endowed 
man, promised to him as an eternal 
reward, provided he observes the law 
of God during life, or performs morally 
good actions and avoids morally evil 
deeds. Finally, the moral actions of 
man are not, at least all of them, per- 
formed out of a sense of the reward 
promised to them and already re- 
ceived ; whereas the objection ad- 



186 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



ducecl in this connection, that these 
actions are due to God in virtue of the 
law by which He commands them, 
only proves that it is our duty to per- 
form them. It does not deny that we 
may be, and are, rewarded by God for 
doing our duty — especially when this 
duty is performed willingly, diligently, 
promptly, and out of an interest for the 
glory of God and the promotion of His 
designs in ourselves and others. 

A greater difficulty — a stumbling 
block, in fact, for some people — lies in 
the nature of our demerit before God. 
Not. indeed, that man may deserve pun- 
ishment at the hands of God, both in 
this life and in the next — this much 
all concede, and claim that they under- 
stand it. 

The stumbling block is the nature 
of the punishment in the next world. 
It is objected from the start that it is 
against reason. Not, indeed, that there 
should be punishment in the next 
world ; for the idea of an All -Just 
God, the fact that man's soul is im- 
mortal, and that the lot of the good 
and the wicked in this world is so one- 



THE TRIBUNAL OF CONSCIENCE. 187 

sided, goes all the way to prove that 
the wicked shall reap the reward of their 
evil, in the punishment of the next 
world. But it does seem unreasonable, 
we are told, that this punishment should 
be eternal. Yet, we are forced by 
reason itself to admit and maintain, as 
we do in this proposition, that: 

The eternal duration of the pains 
of Hell, which God has ordained as 
the supreme and perfect sanction of 
His law and of the dictate of the human 
Conscience, is not only not adverse to 
reason, but in entire harmony with 
its legitimate conclusions. 

There are three points from which 
to consider the eternal duration of the 
torments of Hell : In the first place, 
from the standpoint of God: secondly, 
from the standpoint of the human will: 
and, thirdly, from the standpoint of sin. 
the cause of this torment. From each 
of these points of view, the doctrine of 
eternal punishment is in full accord with 
reason. 

For, to begin with, eternal punish- 
ment is not in contradiction to the good- 
ness, the mercy nor the justice of God. 



188 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



Not certainly to His goodness, since 
He punishes because the law has been 
violated, not because He delights in the 
sufferings of His creatures; not to His 
mercy, for He does not punish without 
permitting an opportunity for repent- 
ance ; not to His justice for He punishes 
in proportion to the violation of the law, 
and only after affording every natural 
and supernatural aid to its observance, 
and when the time of probation has 
passed. 

God's mercy is infinite, it is true, 
as a divine attribute; but its man- 
ifestation cannot be infinite, where this 
manifestation would interfere with God's 
infinite justice. His attributes cannot 
clash. Now, God's infinite justice re- 
quires that the punishment of grievous 
sin should be eternal. 

The crime is infinite. It is an offense 
against the infinite majesty of God. The 
punishment must be in proportion, and, 
therefore, infinite. But it cannot be in 
any other way infinite, but in duration; 
for a creature cannot, but in duration, 
undergo an infinite punishment, and 
this on the principle that an infinite 



THE TRIBUNAL OF CONSCIENCE. 189 

accident cannot subsist in a finite sub- 
ject. 

Moreover, the sin that is the matter and 
motive of eternal punishment, is itself 
eternal; so too, then, should the pun- 
ishment be everlasting. For one, who 
by his own free will falls into mortal 
sin, thereby voluntarily places himself 
in a state from which he cannot emerge 
unless divinely aided. Consequently, 
by the fact itself that man wishes to 
place himself in a state of mortal sin, 
and actually does so, he constitutes 
himself, in as far as it depends upon 
him to do so, in a state of eternal aver- 
sion from God. Perishing in this state, 
his will enters into its post-probationary 
or fixed condition, from which it is impos- 
sible, even for God Himself to ever un- 
settle it without annihilating the will; 
and He has, in the very nature with 
which He created the will, promised that 
this He would never do. That it should 
change involves a contradiction. 

Aversion to God and love of Him are 
contradictory states, and their simulta- 
neous existence in any will is intrinsically 
impossible. For, on supposition, the will, 



190 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



after death, is fixed in hate. Its period 
of change — probationary period — has 
passed. Now, it is impossible for it to 
remain a will fixed in this hatred of God, 
and to become, at the same time, a will 
fixed in the love of God. It would 
thus be and not be at the same time, 
fixed in the hatred of God; or be and 
not be fixed in the love of God. This 
is impossible. It remains, therefore, 
forever in sin; and for this reason eter- 
nally deserving of punishment. 

There is, then, nothing in the goodness, 
mercy or justice of God to lead us to con- 
clude that eternal punishment is unrea- 
sonable. 

Nor is there anything at variance with 
reason in eternal punishment, if looked 
at, in the next place from the stand- 
point of the sinner. His offense, as we 
intimated, is infinite. It is an injury 
done to the infinite majesty of God. 
For, an offense is, we know, in its grav- 
ity, measured by the nature, dignity, 
condition, and other specific notes, of 
the party offended. Reason, therefore, 
dictates that its punishment should also 
be infinite, that is in justice measured 



THE TRIBUNAL OF CONSCIENCE. 191 



by the gravity of the offense. It can- 
not be infinite but by lasting, as we 
said, forever. For man, being finite, is, 
as we just now intimated, incapable of 
otherwise being the subject of an infin- 
ite quality, modification or punishment. 

Moreover, the sanction of the 
Eternal Law should, as reason dictates, 
be sufficient and efficacious. Now, un- 
less the punishment of the grievous 
violation of the Natural Law is eternal, 
this sanction would fail in both these 
respects. For without having recourse 
to any proof more urgent than the ex- 
isting condition of things, the strongest 
argument to illustrate the truth of this 
doctrine is that, even those who are con- 
vinced that this sanction is eternal and 
that the punishment of sin is to be 
everlasting, even those are neverthe- 
less in countless instances not at all 
deterred from the most grievous viola- 
tions of the law of God and man. 

Man in point of fact is the subject of 
manifold and serious trials which render 
the path of virtue extremely difficult. 
The struggle of life is long and painful. 
The temptations of the world, the flesh 



192 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS 



and the devil are frightful and persist- 
ent. Man, himself, is, in fine, even with 
grace, so weak, unstable and given to 
the pursuit of creatures rather than of the 
Creator, that no sanction short of an 
eternal punishment for a contempt of 
the law, is able to restrain his human 
will and to preserve it in uninterrupted 
harmony with the Divine Will. 

Finally, man deserves punishment as 
long as he is in sin. On the other hand, 
he will, as we have shown, be in sin for- 
ever, if he closes his probation in the state 
of grievous guilt or entire aversion from 
God; unless the cessation of his proba- 
tion is an injustice, and therefore unrea- 
sonable. But, there is nothing unrea- 
sonable in God's appointing a time be- 
yond which no hope of pardon for 
sin committed is possible. Man himself 
does that much. 

Crimes of which a culprit will not ex- 
onerate himself through the process of a 
complete legal probation, he stands 
thereafter accused of without appeal. 

Contracts remaining unsatisfied upon 
the expiration of the stipulated period 
of their force and value are there- 



THE TRIBUNAL OF CONSCIENCE. 193 



after worthless. Duties, whose fulfill- 
ment is required during a fixed period 
cease on its expiration. Rights are no 
longer rights when the term of their jurid- 
ical force has transpired. Hence, upon 
the expiration of man's probation, sins 
unrepented for will remain, and there- 
fore, so long as they endure, will con- 
tinue to deserve punishment. They will, 
however, endure forever. As a conse- 
quence, their punishment must be eter- 
nal. 

This same conclusion is, in the third 
and last place, reached by dwelling 
upon the nature of sin, which is the 
cause of this eternal punishment. It is, 
in the first instance, a perpetual aver- 
sion from God. An aversion, inasmuch 
as it is a turning from God upon the 
pursuit of some creature or passion. It 
is perpetual, for the simple reason that 
Divine Grace alone can release man from 
the sinful state. Now, there is a strict 
proportion between a perpetual state of 
aversion from God and eternal punish- 
ment. 

Accordingly, whether we take into 
consideration God, man, or sin itself, 

C. E. — 13 



194 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



there is nothing repugnant to sound 
reason in the eternity of the punishment 
of the next life, which God has insti- 
tuted as a sufficient and efficacious 
sanction of the law by which He governs 
man in his career towards his final end. 

Eternal punishment does, I admit, 
jar upon our human feelings. But 
we are not to always judge of the 
reason underlying the dispositions of 
Divine Providence by their harmony or 
discord with our sentiments or feelings. 
We should reflect that, if, indeed, it is an 
awful thing to be punished eternally for 
even a single mortal sin, this dreadful 
realization proves not that God is un- 
just, merciless and wicked ; but that it 
is an enormous evil to offend the Divine 
Majesty by the commission of even a 
single mortal sin. 



Lecture Fifth 



(195) 



The Doctrine of Right 

OR 

The Ultimate Source of Man's Juridical 
Powers and Claims 

IN the brief and summary course of 
General Ethics, of which the pres- 
ent lecture is to supply the con- 
cluding thesis, I have successively set 
forth : (1) The ultimate end of human 
action, which is the knowledge and 
fruition in the next life, of God, the In- 
finite Good ; (2) the Moral Criterion of 
human action, that is established that 
the standard of ofood and bad in human 
action is its conformity, primarily and 
remotely, with the Divine Goodness, the 
end and exemplar of the moral order, 
proximately but secondarily, with reason, 
the directive principle of human actions, 
or, briefly, that it is its conformity with 
objective order of all things towards 
God as perceived by the practical 
reason. I have set forth: (3) that 

197 



198 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



the moral necessity or obligation re- 
quiring- man to do moral good and to 
avoid moral evil, is founded in the 
Natural Law or in the promulgation in 
rational nature of the Eternal Law, 
which is that eternal ordination bv 
which God governs all things to their 
appointed ends, proximate, mediate, 
ultimate. And (4), I have established 
that the principle by which both the 
Moral Standard and the Natural Law — 
which constitute the integral objective 
rule or guide of moral conduct — are 
applied to each individual act. is the 
human Conscience, which is thereby 
the principle in man of moral responsi- 
bility, and of merit and demerit before 
God and man. 

It is evident from this doctrine, that 
the moral order is held together by 
moral bonds, and that the free activity 
of man is restrained within the limits of 
this order bv forces and powers grow- 
ing out of nature itself. But it has 
escaped no one that, while man exhibits 
fundamental relations towards God, 
he, at the same time, stands in a 
manifold relation to his fellowman. 



THE DOCTRINE OF RIGHT. 



199 



considered socially and individually. 
The former relations are termed man's 
moral obligations, and the sum of these 
obligations constitutes the moral order. 
The latter are called his juridical rela- 
tions, and they constitute the juridical 
order. If. then, his relations with God. 
his last end. are governed by the diverse 
phases of that necessity of the Natural 
Law which we call moral obligation, his 
relations with his f ellowman must also be 
crovernecl by a necessity, that is. by a sum 
of forces and powers constituting his 
juridical obligations or his natural 
Rights and Duties. A course of funda- 
mental Ethics could not logically treat 
the one obligation and neglect the 
other. They are parts of one whole. 
Moral obligation is juridical, when the 
human act is looked at from the stand- 
point of man's relations to God. self, 
and f ellowman; juridical obligation is 
moral, when the human act is viewed 
from the standpoint of Conscience, the 
Natural Law and man's last end. 

The treatment of natural Rights and 
Duties may be. I know, and is. various, for 
the ends proposed in their consideration. 



200 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



I shall treat them from the ethical 
standpoint only. To do this with a 
certain order, I shall first, after some 
preliminary notions upon the nominal 
and real definition of Right and 
Duty, establish the existence of natural 
Rights and Duties; secondly, I shall 
prove the unity of the moral and juridi- 
cal orders, or show that all natural Rights 
and Duties are founded in the moral 
order; thirdly, I will examine two or 
three of the leading theories of the 
origin of Rights and Duties. 

The term " Right " is not unfre- 
quently employed in the sense of " the 
just" or " the object of justice ;" not 
of justice in the very general signification 
of righteousness, but of justice in the 
more technical meaning of legal, or, bet- 
ter still, social justice, the sense in which 
it is divided into commutative, legal, 
and distributive justice. Right, in this 
definition, is that equitable thing which 
founds any one of these three orders of 
justice. 

Again, Right is often taken to 
mean law. The reason for this is, that 
law is the rule or measure of the just, 



THE DOCTRINE OF RIGHT. 



201 



or of the right or equitable thing upon 
which Right is founded. In this sig- 
nification, Right follows the extension 
of law and its qualification. So that, 
in the same manner that we speak of 
the- moral law, the social, international, 
ecclesiastical or canon law, the civil 
law ; so too we speak of moral Right, 
social, international, ecclesiastical and 
civil Rights. The decision of the court, 
the ruling even of the judge, is often 
termed Right, in this second meaning 
of the term, because, in these illus- 
trations law is, correctly enough, the 
rule or measure of the just or equitable 
thing which founds Right. 

The third signification given to Right 

o o o 

is both more familiar and more distinc- 
tive. In this sense. Right implies a legiti- 
mate moral power to get and to keep 
anything, or to perform a function or 
quasi-function the violation of which 
would constitute an injury. When 
speaking of Right, this is the sense in 
which we shall employ the term, unless 
we distinctly mention that we use it in 
another meaning. We do not thereby 
exclude or ignore Right in the first or 



202 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



second meaning, but to avoid ambiguity, 
we will, when we must advert to it in 
these other senses, refer to it as justice 
or as law, rather than as Right. 

Now, that Rio-ht. or that this moral 
power, is something real, the end of 
which is the foundation and conserva- 
tion of social order, no one seriously 
calls in question. The controversy 
turns rather upon the nature of Right 
and upon its connection with the moral 
order. On the one hand, those who 
are Positivis-ts in Ethics, deny the ex- 
istence of natural Rights, and maintain 
that all rights are, as they would have 
all morality to be. founded in some 
positive law. On the other hand, of 
those Rationalists who concede the ex- 
istence of natural Rights, as distin- 
guished from and even founding posi- 
tive Rights, many, if not all. deny that 

o 7 J 7 7 J 

there is any kinship between the moral 
and juridical orders, or that Right is 
founded upon morality. 

Christian or Catholic moralists, how- 
ever, teach, first, that besides Positive 
Rights man enjoys further natural 
Rights ; secondly, that every natural 



THE DOCTRINE OF RIGHT. 



203 



Right, that all Right, in so far as it 
may claim to be a Right, is de- 
rived from and subsists in virtue of 
the Divine Authority, and that, there- 
fore, thirdly, Right is wound up with 
the moral order by an essential and 
changeless unity. Before- setting forth 
the doctrine involved in these three 
points, it is necessary to understand 
distinctly in what the essence of Right 
consists. The divergence of opin- 
ion which we find upon the first prin- 
ciples of Right is largely due to a 
misconception of the nature of 
Right. 

All admit, and it is hardly possible, 
in the face of a universal persuasion, to 
deny, that the essential feature of all 
Right is its coactive inviolability, or 
is its so thoroughly founded and sanc- 
tioned claim in justice to the perform- 
ance of a corresponding duty, that the 
duty may be even enforced. Modern 
writers deny that this alone is sufficient 
to constitute an efficacious Right. It 
must, from their standpoint, be further 
coupled with a physical power of effi- 
caciously exerting coercive measures. 



204 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



thus rendering this inviolability some- 
thing extrinsic and accidental. Yet, to 
state the true doctrine in the shape of a 
proposition, we submit, that : 

The coactive inviolability ichich 
constitutes the essential note of Right, 
subsists independently of any physical 
power to efficaciously exert coercive 
measures ; so that a Right otherwise 
legitimately founded, remains intact 
and valid, even though it become, by 
the accident of circumstances, destitute 
of both public and private physical sup- 
port. 

This truth grows, first, out of the fact 
that Right is essentially a moral power 
and, in this, is so distinguished from 
merely physical force; that, it is therefore 
wholly independent of the support of 
physical aid or strength. The same truth 
grows, secondly, out of the absolute 
moral efficacy of the title upon which a 
genuine Right is founded. This title is 
the dictate of the moral and practical 
reason. It is absolute, and therefore 
independent of any condition arising 
out of the physical order or the order 
of material force. 



THE DOCTRINE OF RIGHT. 205 



Moreover, that it be exercised is not an 
essential requisite of any legitimate 
moral power. It is not essential, there- 
fore, to the existence of a Right, that it 
should be exercised. Hence, even 
though through circumstances it be 
forced to remain in abeyance, it is still 
essentially a legitimate moral power. 

Finally, there is nothing so preposter- 
ous or absurd as that all the Rights of 
man, even the most essential, should 
depend, not simply for their exercise and 
their external efficacy, but even for their 
substantial character and juridical vigor, 
upon uncertain and contingent cir- 
cumstances, and be, in this way, at 
the very mercy of perversely minded 
men. This idea, or rather doctrine, is not 
only in its sequel but in its principle 
and source subversive of every notion 
of order and justice. It has grown 
mainly out of the axiom of modern 
jurisprudence, an axiom which, in its 
turn is based upon the Positivist 
theory of Right, that, viz. : " There is 
no Right but Positive Right," that is, 
no Right but that constituted and sanc- 
tioned by society, or rather, the state. 



206 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



This doctrine, to begin with, is abso- 
lutely false, notwithstanding the hold it 
certainly has upon th6 popular and even 
juridical mind in this country. For: 

There exist natural Mights essen- 
tially independent of any positive ordi- 
nance and furnished with every jurid- 
ical power. 

There are two distinct grounds upon 
which this doctrine rests: (1) The char- 
acteristic features of a genuine, bona 
fide Right, and (2) the philosophical 
necessity for admitting the existence of 
natural, as opposed to positive, Right. 

The characters which give existence 
and individuality to any Right, are, first, 
definiteness — indefinite, vague Rights 
are practically no Rights — and, secondly, 
juridical efficacy. Both these char- 
acteristics are prominently, the preroga- 
tives of natural Rights. In the first 
instance, the determination, definite- 
ness, or precision of any Right, 
grows out of the promulgation and 
clearness of the law, upon which it rests 
and upon some clear fact applying or 
concreting this Right in some person or 
in regard to some definite matter. 



THE DOCTRINE OF RIGHT. 



207 



The general precepts of justice, like 
the general principles of the Moral or 
Natural Law. are so evident to the light 
of reason that it is impossible for any- 
one who enjoys the use of reason, to 
remain in invincible ignorance touching 
their existence. In virtue of the same 
natural evidence and light, the applica- 
tion of the general laws of nature, in at 
least obvious matters, is fully and clearly 
made for every intelligence which has 
been so far evolved as to exercise its 
most elementary and essential functions. 
And if indeed at times these precepts 
or principles founded in the Natural 
Law are obscured and unattended to, 
this arises not from any defect of 
natural light to perceive them, but 
grows out of an induced darkness, cre- 
ated by a depraved and rebellious 
will. 

Moreover, and finally, the daily and in- 
timate consciousness of each of us, 
makes us clearly aware of the existence 
of those general precepts of Right, 
which regard the foundations of social, 
domestic and individual life, and which 
are proximately and immediately neces- 



208 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS, 



sary for their existence and well-being. 
In so far, therefore, as the definiteness 
of a Right depends upon the promulga- 
tion of the law which constitutes its 
basis, natural Right is as determined 
as the law of nature itself. But its ap- 
plication is equally determined, defi- 
nite and precise. 

There are certain Rights and also 
certain Duties so immediately derived 
from the evident principles of the 
Natural Law, that their particular de- 
termination and concrete application 
arise from facts which antedate every 
positive, public ordinance or declaration 
founded in the laws or received customs 
of any and all communities. Such 
Rights are, first of all, the absolute or 
connatural Rights of man, the title of 
which is founded in human nature itself, 
and which are, accordingly, determined 
by the natural fact alone of the existence 
of the individual. Of these are the 
natural Right to live and preserve life, 
the Right to personal security, the Right 
of liberty of Conscience, of acquiring 
property, the Right of contract, and the 
like. 



THE DOCTRINE OF EIGHT. 



209 



Such, again, are those acquired pri- 
vate Rights — acquired in view of the or- 
ganic origin of human society — which, 
of their very nature, precede and 
are logically prerequired in the in- 
dividual, for the existence of social 
intercourse. Of this kind, for in- 
stance, are those juridical relations 
among private individuals determined 
by the exercise of simply connatural 
Rights. Such is the Right to possess any 
definite matter of property, the Right 
involved in simple contracts, in dona- 
tions, in exchanges, in purchases, etc. 
Of this kind such, too, are those acquired 
Rights growing out of the juridical rela- 
tions essential to and constitutive of do- 
mestic society. 

Such, for example, are the Rights exist- 
ing in man and wife, in child and parent. 
Such, in a word are those Rights, found 
in the individual and in the family as 
the preexisting elements which, in the 
natural order, ontologically precede and 
are prerequired by civil society. 

Finally, even among public Rights, 
there exist some whose sufficient de- 
termination as Rights antedate any posi- 

C. E. — 14 



210 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



tive intervention of society. Thus some 
are specifically determined; as the 
Right, e. g., possessed and con- 
ceded to public authority as such, 
apart from what may be its historic 
form. Some are determined even in 
their individual nature by the coop- 
eration, it is true, of many men. yet not 
by the ordination of society; but rather 
through the concurrence of natural facts, 
the various exercises of private liberty, 
or the convention of diverse individuals 
for a given object. 

As far. therefore, as the first requisite 
constituting natural Right is con- 
cerned, there are certainly Rights in 
man determined by their foundation 
in the Natural Law. and their con- 
crete exemplification and illustration in 
natural facts or conditions of the indi- 
vidual, the family, and even of civil 
society, which antecede and are pre- 
required for the very existence of 
society and civil organisms. 

The second requisite to constitute a 
genuine Right is an innate juridical 
efficacy, independent of all extrinsic 
support from the ordinations and mate- 



THE DOCTRINE OF EIGHT. 



211 



rial aid of civil enactments. Now, 
natural Rights are eminently in posses- 
sion of such a juridical efficacy. To 
make this conclusion clear, it is essen- 
tial to recall here the preliminary 
truth upon which we dwelt above, that, 
viz.. the essential characteristic of a 
genuine Right, its coactive inviolability, 
is not to be confounded with anv actual 
physical force or with any other external 
concomitant of a fully equipped Right, 
in virtue of which its requirements 
may be forcibly, if necessary, put 
into execution. This inviolability is. 
as we pointed out, an entirely moral 
power founded upon the postulate of 
Reason or the Natural Law. and. like 
the Right itself, whose essence it is. 
subsists in all its rational vigor, al- 
though, perforce of external conditions, 
the physical strength to efficaciously 
assert its prerogatives mav be denied 
it. This observation is all the more to 
be attended to. that precisely in this 
confounding of juridical inviolability 
with the physical supplement of a fully 
equipped Right, lies the error of the 
denial of man's natural Rights, or the 



212 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



assertion of the existence of only posi- 
tive Rights. From this premise, there- 
fore, clearly understood, follows the 
essential necessity of admitting, ante- 
cedently to the existence of any posi- 
tive Right, the previous validity and 
efficacy of natural Right. 

I think, in fact, that no doubt can 
attach to this doctrine, when we reflect 
that the validity and, therefore, juridical 
efficacy of natural Right, is the founda- 
tion and essential condition of the 
validity and efficacy of even every posi- 
tive Right. It certainly is the founda- 
tion of every positive human Right, 
for every positive human Right, whether 
founded in law or custom, emanates from 
some human authority, and has its objec- 
tive force or value from the same source. 

Well, now, no human authority is final 
or self-subsistent. It reposes for its 
strength on an antecedent law or right. 
From this, in consequence, it immediately 
derives the law-making and right-consti- 
tuting prerogative conceded to it by 
all men. Now, there is no such ante- 
cedent or original Right within the 
limits of the natural order, but that 



THE DOCTRINE OF RIGHT. 



213 



natural Right which legitimate human 
authority has, to be acknowledged and 
obeyed, when it legitimately ordains. 
Any other Right must account for its 
claim to be a Right; and, therefore, the 
authority founding it must give a reason 
w T hich all will understand to be final, 
why it has a right to be acknowledged 
and obeyed, It can, in the natural 
order, go no farther back, than to the 
Right it has from nature to make laws 
and establish Rights. 

This same reasoning- will hold in the 
case also of divine positive Right. 
For, although as vested in God it pos- 
sesses a native force of abstract existence, 
it would have no force or value in 
the concrete, unless, as an essential and 
prerequisite condition, there existed in 
human nature, perforce of the integrity 
of the Natural Law, a juridical and in- 
dispensable duty to respect God's posi- 
tive commands. Without this basis, then, 
even God's Right would lack the force 
and efficacy of genuine Right for human 
society. 

Another argument urging this same 
conclusion, is gathered from the origin 



214 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



and constitution of civil society. In 
its natural origin and evolution, so- 
ciety is a moral organism successively 
evolved from and simultaneously com- 
posed of individuals, families, clans, 
tribes, etc., exhibiting, finally, the com- 
posite and complex form of civil society. 
These evolved and constituent sub- 
forms are not mere lifeless elements of 
civil society. They are, in themselves, 
vital, moral organisms. They possess, 
consequently, their essential internal 
constitutions. They have their respec- 
tive ends and scopes, antecedently to 
their ultimate evolution and comprehen- 
sion into the formal existence of civil 
society. They were juridical factors, 
previously to their being civil, social 
elements or members. 

Hence, in civil society, we have, by 
the very institution of nature, social 
organisms anterior to not only every 
public positive law or Right, but to 
every form of civil society, from 
which it is claimed that positive Right 
emanates. For it must be very evident 
that these social organisms cannot and 
could not subsist without certain internal 



THE DOCTRINE OF RIGHT. 215 



juridical relations, or without an order 
of Rights and Duties instituted, like 
the organisms themselves, by nature 
and, like these organisms themselves, 
antedating every positive law and right, 
or, which is tantamount, drawing their 
validity and efficacy whence they draw 
their institution, from the law of man's 
rational nature. 

A final argument for the existence 
and native efficacy of natural Right 
is that, in the order of Providence, 
natural Right is the one necessary 
and efficacious bulwark of personal 
liberty against the arbitrary and mani- 
fest abuses of private Rights. For 
it is impossible that in the social order 
there should exist any other legitimate 
safeguard to which man could appeal, 
if not always with real results, at least 
with the certainty of moral retribution 
against the arbitrary violation of his 
just rights by man or State. Were there 
any other appeal, it would be to the 
Divine Positive Right or to a superior 
human Right. But the appeal to Divine 
Positive Right is an appeal to revela- 
tion, and to the supernatural order. 



216 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



This would be an admission of the insuffi- 
ciency of the natural order within its own 
sphere, an absurd supposition when we 
reflect that, while the supernatural is 
built upon the natural, they are never- 
theless independent, and both equally 
the perfect work of an all-wise and 
all-holy God. 

Besides, there could be no logical 
appeal to revelation by men such as the 
Statolaters and Positivists. who are our 
adversaries. They admit neither revela- 
tion nor religion nor the authority 
and Right which is inherent in these 
interpreters and executors of the Divine 
Positive Bight. On the other hand, 
there is no appeal to a superior human 
positive Right. For this, in the first 
instance, involves the natural justice and 
therefore natural Right to such appeal. 
Secondly, there is no higher Right 
which lies somewhere between human 
positive Rig-lit and natural Right. 
There is. therefore, nothing left but an 
appeal to that Right which man has. 
which is founded in nature, or to admit 
the juridical omnipotence of human law 
as the founder and disposer of private 



THE DOCTRINE OF RIGHT. 



217 



Right. This latter alternative is so 
plainly absurd and destructive of all 
justice, that it is not even to be 
thought of. For. on this supposi- 
tion, it would follow that. Rights 
founded in nature itself, and. there- 
fore, inalienable, would, in a col- 
lision of natural and positive Rights, 
where the former are not protected bv 
a bill of Ricrhts. be forced to vacate their 
title and to abdicate the very name even 
of Right. Thus, according to this teach- 
ing", slaves shut off from the protection of 
the civil law and handed over to the 
avarice and tyranny of their masters, 
would, because the Right of the master 
prevails by law and force, possess in 
truth and justice no valid Right, no claim 
that could have the name of Right, to 
liberty. Thus. too. little children de- 
prived of existence before their birth or 
exposed to death after birth would, if 
this doctrine possessed any truth, really 
possess no valid Right to life: because 
their Right to live was. or is. proscribed 
by the nefarious laws or still more 
criminal customs of their country or 
their age. The natural Rights, there- 



218 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



fore, enjoyed by man, are his strongest 
appeal against the abuses and injustice 
committed in the name of positive Right; 
and in this, as we stated, we have an- 
other argument for the inborn efficacy of 
those Rights that are founded in nature. 

From the arguments we have put for- 
ward to establish the existence of nat- 
ural as against merely positive Right, 
we have meanwhile also made it to appear 
that, not only are there natural Rights, 
but that natural Right is the founda- 
tion and essential condition of all posi- 
tive Right. With this truth established, 
we are prepared to move one step 
further on in our doctrine of Right, and 
to state, in the form of another doctrinal 
proposition, that: 

Every Right, formally as Right, 
that is, considered in its irrefragable 
vigor— from whatsoever source it im- 
mediately arises, or whencesoever it 
in particular receives its determination 
as this or that Right — -flows finally from 
the Divine Authority; and, in virtue of 
this same originating authority, sub- 
sists of its own supplemented juridical 
vigor. 



THE DOCTRINE OF RIGHT. 219 

We clearly distinguish two elements in 
every Right, first, the formal or essentially 
constitutive element peculiar to every 
Right, in so far as it is a Right; secondly, 
what is termed the material element, 
in virtue of which every individual 
Right enjoys its special determination 
as such and such a Right. This ele- 
ment is as diverse and multiple as the 
contingent facts upon which it depends. 
When, therefore, we speak of all Rights, 
as founded mediately or immediately 
upon the Divine Authority, we are not 
of course alluding to this material and 
contingent element; but we speak of the 
specific or moral element. It is this 
element which lends to every Right its 
character of Right. For Right, if we 
may be allowed to recur to our defini- 
tions, may be taken in two senses. It may 
stand for the law upon which the Right 
rests. This definition of Right, although 
one of the three legitimate senses in 
which the term may be employed, is one 
which we promised not to introduce, 
without calling attention to the 
change. Well we have here made this 
change. 



220 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



Now, every law is founded upon the 
Divine Authority. Natural law certainly 
is. This we established in our lecture on 
the Natural Law. There we indicated 
that the Natural Law is but the pro- 
mulgation of the Eternal Law in ra- 
tional nature. On the other hand, no 
Positive Law, the law upon which all 
positive Right rests, can exist which is 
not formally and reductively, or in its 
obligatory force, ultimately founded 
upon the Natural Law. And this for 
two reasons at least: first, because of the 
nature of moral obligation, which enters 
essentially into every Right; secondly, 
by reason of the essentially one and com- 
mon end of all natural legislation. For 
nobody but God, the Supreme Regu- 
lator of the moral world, can oblige 
rational creatures in his own Right. 
Hence, nobody but the Divine Legis- 
lator or one holding power from Him in 
the natural or supernatural order, can 
make a law obliging a rational creature. 
Hence, again, every positive law, human 
or divine, is formally and reductively, 
or in its obligatory force, founded upon 
the Natural Law. For, to pursue the 



THE DOCTRINE OF RIGHT. 221 



matter to its basis, the ground reason 
of it all is, that no being but God can 
impose upon a rational creature the 
disjunctive necessity of doing good and 
avoiding evil, as an essential condition 
and a necessary means of attaining to 
the Ultimate End. 

Moreover, and in the second place, 
every positive Right has this in com- 
mon with the Natural Law, that, it 
is "a rational ordinance promulgated 
for the common good." Hence, 
too, it participates, in some man- 
ner, in the essence of the Natural 
Law, and promulgates, in particular, and 
in a relative way, that which the Natural 
Law promulgates in a universal and 
absolute manner. Thus, it either limits 
the general ordinance of the Natural 
Law to some special subject-matter or 
it sets forth, in a definite and circum- 
scribed manner, that which the Natural 
Law enunciates in a general and in- 
definite fashion. Hence, finally, all 
Positive Law is but a limitation and 
application, more or less direct, of 
the Natural Law, which, as we have 
said, is nothing but a participation 



222 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



of the Eternal Law, existing in the mind 
of the Regulator of the universe. 

But Right may, again, be taken as 
we have taken it throughout this lecture, 
as a moral power to get or hold or do any- 
thing. In this signification, it is inter- 
nally and essentially, correlated to 
Duty. Now all Duty, of whatever de- 
scription, is ultimately traceable to the 
Divine Authority. It arises from Posi- 
tive or Natural Law and like these is 
ultimately reducible to the Divine de- 
cree ordaining the observance of the 
moral order, on which, as we have seen, 
every moral obligation is finally 
grounded. For the autonomy of reason, 
the alternative constructed by Kant, as- 
sumes the absolute independence and 
self -existence of human reason, and lomc- 
ally leads to Fatalism or Pantheism. In 
fact, to adduce a final argument for 
every Right, the moral force — that which 
equips it with inviolability — is its title. 
Now this, in the case of every Right, 
is immediately or mediately founded 
upon some Divine law. 

Hence, the very foundation or title of 
every Right, rests upon Divine Author- 



THE DOCTRINE OF RIGHT. 223 



ity. For the title of every Right is, of 
its very nature, some truth or dictate of 
the moral reason which is universal 
and evident in itself, and which is, 
through a logical necessity, applied 
by the Conscience or Positive Law 
to some particular case; thus claim- 
ing the reverence of every rational 
being under pressure of moral obliga- 
tion. 

Well, now, the dictate of practical 
reason has no power in itself to create 
moral obligation. It but binds in so far 
only as it exhibits the Divine Natural 
Law inborn in rational nature and di- 
vinely sanctioned. Therefore finally, 
every Right, in virtue of its title, or in- 
violability^ founded and ultimately up- 
held by Divine Authority. All Right, 
then, whether we dwell upon the law 
which creates it, or upon the moral power 
in which it essentially resides, or finally, 
upon the title or objective moral dictate 
or truth on which its inviolability rests, 
verifies to the full the teaching of the 
Apostle of the Gentiles, that all power — 
all Right — is mediately or immediately 
from God. 



224 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



From this truth, as from an established 
premise, we gather our last principle 
touching the true doctrine of Right, viz., 
that : 

Right is not only logically — and, as 
some teach, in its original source — but 
essentially connected with morality ; 
that is, it is of the very essence of true 
Right to subsist loithin the objective 
moral order as a constitutive part of 
order. 

In fact, those who do not confound 
Might with Right, admit at least a 
nexus in idea between the Moral and 
the Right, for it is pretty generally con- 
ceded that, in their origin, they are, as 
we have seen, both from God, But 
modern theorists stop here, and deny 
that there need be any real harmony in 
the actual function of Right and the 
obligations of Morality, They have 
gone so far as to contend that what 
they are pleased to call a Right can be 
plainly immoral and at distinct variance 
with the will of God as the author of 
the moral order, and, notwithstanding, 
remain a strict Right in the possession 
of all its prerogatives. Now, this is cer- 



THE DOCTRINE OF RIGHT. 225 



tainly false, if Right, besides emanating, 
like the moral order, from God, is,f urther, 
a constitutive part of this same moral 
order. 

But there is no difficulty whatever 
in seeing that Right is, of a truth, 
a constitutive part of the moral order, if 
we but dwell upon (1) the final unity 
of the universal moral order, and (2) 
upon the manifest absurdity, not to say 
blasphemy, of any contrary hypothesis. 
For, in the first place, any Right which 
embraces certain objective rules of con- 
duct by which rational creatures are, 
in any way essentially consonant with 
their nature, directed and controlled 
toward the final end of their creation, 
must necessarily be contained within 
the sphere of the moral order, as an 
essential part and special province of 
this same order. 

Now, all Right does involve some 
such legislation. For Right is, when 
its final outcome and ultimate purpose 
have been told, occupied, after all, in the 
proper conduct and guidance of men 
towards their last end. Its guidance is 
not, it is true, general and in control of 

C. E — 15 



226 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



the universal sphere of rational activity ; 
but it is special in so far that, within 
their own province, each one's Rights 
and Duties constitute, according to the 
individual exigencies of his social na- 
ture, the sum of those laws which 
govern him in the pursuit of his last 
end. It is evident, then, that its aim is, 
within a restricted or special sphere, 
essentially that of the moral order. 
Hence, it is either a merely vacant idea 
without a reality, or it is an essential 
part and a special province — the jurid- 
ical department or constituent — of the 
moral order. 

Any contrary hypothesis is, as we 
said in the second place, absurd, if 
not blasphemous, for the only contrary 
hypothesis is twofold : either that all 
Right is Positive Right, and this we 
have shown to be eminently false ; 
or that a moral or legal power may be a 
Right, and yet remain in antagonism 
with the moral law and order — this is 
absurd. It involves the possibility of a 
moral power which has no kinship in 
reality with morality. Nay, it is blas- 
phemous, since it so construes the jus- 



THE DOCTRINE OF EIGHT. 227 

tice of God, as to make God, by 
His authorship of Right, ordain and 
sanction that which, as the author of 
the moral order, He forbids and con- 
demns. It, therefore, follows that Right 
is embraced by the moral order, and 
that the juridical order is but a consti- 
tutive part of the moral order. 

The Christian doctrine of Right, 
which we have evolved, is, of course, in 
opposition to nearly all the schools of 
modern juridical thought. I cannot 
enumerate them all, and will, therefore, 
content myself with a mere word upon 
the leading modern theories of right. 
These are the Materialistic, the Historic, 
the Rationalistic or Kantian, and the 
Pantheistic or Hegelian theory of the 
origin and foundation of human right. 

I will not delay upon the material- 
istic theory. It is of Grecian and 
English origin, having for its ancient 
promoter, the Grecian sophist, Callicles, 
and its modern resuscitator, the English 
philosopher, Thomas Hobbes. Hobbes 
traces the source and reason of all Right 
to the supreme and invincible physical 
power of the supreme civil authority. 



228 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



Its ground principle is so absurd, and 
the Materialism upon which it is founded, 
so absolutely impossible that it hardly 
deserves a notice, were it not that this 
principle, so generally denied in theory, 
is only too partizanly carried out by the 
civil power in practice. With this 
school, " Might is Right,'' an immoral, 
sceptical and Godless principle, repug- 
nant alike to reason, justice, and the 
common sense of mankind. 

The Rationalism of Kant is more 
elevated in its concept of Right, but 
equally false with Materialism as a 
doctrine of Riofht. Kant's juridical 
theory is apiece with his ethical 
doctrine. The basis of all morality, in 
his opinion, is, as we treated above, the 
internal liberty of the rational being. 
In this it rests, as in its final object. 
All Right, in like manner, has its foun- 
dation in the external or relative liberty 
of the human being. His concept, ac- 
cordingly, of the juridical order is that 
of a legal mechanism in which the ex- 
ternal liberty of every individual is sup- 
posed to coexist with the external liberty 
of every other individual. Hence, his 



THE DOCTRINE OF BIGHT. 229 

definition of Right, that it is "a corn- 
plexus of those conditions under which 
the liberty of one individual subsists si- 
multaneously and harmoniously with the 
liberty of every other individual." Since, 
however, the idea of coactive inviolabil- 
ity is essential to every law, this defini- 
tion he explains by the following one that 
" strict Right is the simultaneous possi- 
bility of the mutual coercion of all, and 
the liberty of each one." From this 
twofold definition, he gathers the first 
principle of the juridical order that, viz., 
an action is conformable to Right, or that 
a human agent is acting within his Right, 
the free exercise of whose action is 
compatible with the existence of the 
freedom of everybody else. Hence, 
finally, the general law of all Right is, 
according to Kant: "So to act exteriorly 
that the enjoyment of your liberty may 
harmoniously coexist with the liberty 
of every other individual." 

Now, this theory is seriously false in its 
philosophic basis. It supposes the abso- 
lute independence of the human will, 
that is, that it is self-subsisting and an 
end to itself. All this is false, as we 



230 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



have shown in our lecture upon the Moral 
Standard. For the will, like the nature 
of which it is a faculty, is created, mu- 
table, subject to passion, and finds the 
complement of its perfection in some- 
thing outside of itself. Moreover, this 
doctrine evidently divorces Right from 
Morality, placing its origin in the 
external principle of mutual coercion. 
It neutralizes, therefore, the moral 
efficacy of Right and practically reduces 
Right, with the Materialists, to mere 
Might, that is, to the simultaneous co- 
active power of our fellow-beings. 
Finally, by making individual liberty 
the end of Right, it divorces the will 
from the end set for it by the Creator, 
and, in so doing, uproots the ultimate 
foundation of all moral efficacy and 
obligatory force. Add to this the prac- 
tical conclusions which flow from it, 
and it becomes evident that it destroys 
the very concept and sanctity of all 
Right. For, on the Kantian supposi- 
tion, the most criminal actions — those 
which affect the sanctity of marriage, 
usury, suicide, homicide, concubinage, 
and other abominable deeds, would 



THE DOCTRINE OF RIGHT. 231 



be legal and within the province 
of legitimate and genuine Right, pro- 
vided they were committed by mutual 
and common consent; provided, that is 
to say, their voluntary commission on 
our part harmonized with the simulta- 
neous coactive power of the liberty en- 
joyed with us, by our fellow-beings. 

There naturally sprang up a reaction 
against a theory of Right, which in- 
volved so broad and immoral conclusions. 
This reaction gave rise to the Historic 
School of Right. The name of " Historic 
School'' attaches to the profession of this 
doctrine from the methods which it pur- 
sued in the study of Right. This school 
repudiates the study of Right from the 
original sources of God, rational na- 
ture, and the moral order. It, on the 
contrary, founds all Right in cus- 
tom and the historic phase and charac- 
ter of legal statutes. In its earlier 
stage, this school, whose aim was whole- 
some — a reaction ao-ainst the Rational- 
ism of the Kantian School of Jurists — 
was represented by abilities as distin- 
guished as those of De Maistre, De 
Bonald, Edmund Burke, Adam Miiller, 



232 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



and Ludwig de Haller. Later, its most 
distingushed support has come from De 
Savigny and Frederic Julius Stahh 

Consistently with its methods and the 
sources from which it derives all Right, 
this school teaches, firstly, that all Right 
is positive, depending, as it does, from the 
laws and customs of peoples. 

It teaches, secondly, that the juridical 
order, although ultimately founded in 
the moral order, or rather, in the order 
instituted by God, is, in its specific 
character of juridical order, independ- 
ent of morality to such an extent even 
that, when in conflict with the moral 
order, it does not lose its juridical force 
and value. 

It teaches, thirdly, that the dictates of 
the Natural Law have not any juridical 
value or universally binding force, inas- 
much as they are not definite enough, 
nor objective, nor are generally acknowl- 
edged. They are, at most, but the 
initial formative principles of Right. 

Fourthly, it teaches that Right is to 
be studied and can be understood only 
from the organic evolution of a people's 
spirit, as illustrated, first, in its customs 



THE DOCTRINE OF BIGHT. 



233 



and, later, in its laws. For the Right 
founded in the customs antedates the 
Right founded in the laws of a people, 

Finally, it teaches that the defects or 
wants experienced from the indetermi- 
nateness and inefficiency of the Natural 
Law. are supplied by the Diyine and 
Ecclesiastical Law. 

This doctrine we haye already con- 
futed. Its ground principle is. clearly 
enough, juridical Positivism, viz.: — that 
there is no natural Riofht: but that 
all Ricfht is positive Right. Secondly, 
like the Kantian principle which it 
aims to confute or at least to coun- 
teract, it divorces the juridical from 
the moral order. At the same time, 
however it traces all Rio-ht to the 
Divine Authority, thus setting up doc- 
trines so at variance with themselves, as 
we have shown, that they involve either 
a flat contradiction or a blasphemous 
construction of the sanctity of the Su- 
preme Law-Giver, or. more correctly, 
both. 

Moreover, the rejection. . by this 
school, of the dictates of natural Rio-ht. 
is merited indeed by the Kantian nat- 



234 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



ural Rights founded upon the autonomy 
of pure reason. These are indeed 
indefinite, not objective, unknown and 
without universally binding force. But 
it is utterly without reason to reject 
Rights founded upon the clear dictates 
of the Natural Law. These, as I have 
shown, are definite, objective, known to 
all men and equipped with a binding 
force as universal as the Divine Author- 
ity, the moral dictates of rational 
nature, and the moral order itself, in 
which this obligatory force is founded. 
As to the spirit of a people being the 
scientific source of the true knowledge 
of Right, it is true, I admit, that, often, 
we may gather from the features of this 
spirit what is the nature of the positive 
laws, customs, and therefore Rights 
of a people; but we cannot always do 
this from the merely historic fact of the 
existence of such a spirit among a 
people. For often enough, laws are 
imposed and customs introduced among 
a people, which are at variance with the 
spirit of that people. 

Moreover, even with regard to those 
positive laws and in consequence, those 



THE DOCTRINE OF RIGHT. 



235 



Rights, known through the spirit of a 
people: the spirit of the people is often, 
indeed, a witness to the fact that such 
was the law or Right, but it never can 
be a criterion by which to ascertain 
whether this or that law or Right was. 
in truth, a genuine, a true, a legitimate 
Right. 

Furthermore, and finally, the method 
which this school supplies, the assumed 
deficiency existing in natural Rights, 
by a recourse to Divine and Ecclesi- 
astical Rights, is unsatisfactory, inas- 
much as many of this school deny the 
existence or do not recognize the jurid- 
ical supremacy of God. revelation and 
the Church. It is. moreover, an incon- 
sistent subterfuge, inasmuch as it is an 
effort to safeguard certain inherent and 
inalienable Rights of man. without, 
while so doing*, admitting the Natural 
Law. which is the only true basis upon 
which their inalienable character can be 
consistently founded. It is. further, 
a very lame effort to explain the effects 
of natural Right, without conceding 
such Right to be a cause of these 
effects. 



236 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



Finally, it is impossible as a con- 
sistent theory, as long as there is no 
moral obligation to admit the validity 
and efficacy of the Divine or Positive 
Ecclesiastical Right. Nay, in its ulti- 
mate outcome, the Historic Doctrine of 
Right differs but perhaps in its evolu- 
tion, from the Pantheism of the Hegelian 
theory of Right. 

Now, Hegel is but an improvement 
upon the Pantheism of Schelling. 
Schelling is the pure outcome of the 
Rationalism of Kant and Fichte, and 
Kant, as we have said, grounded all 
Right upon the external harmony of in- 
dividual liberties, or upon the simul- 
taneous coerciveness of all the free wills 
constituting a social multitude. 

Hegel, establishing as his primordial 
principle, " The absolute thought or the 
6 to think ' without a thinker, as the 
starting point of all philosophizing, 
divides philosophy (1) into the science 
of Logic or the science of the idea by 
itself and for itself ; " (2) into the science 
of Natural Philosophy or the science of 
" the idea in its contradictory, the non- 
idea as existing in another," and (3) 



THE DOCTRINE OF RIGHT. 237 



into the science of spirit, Psychology, 
or the science of " the idea returning 
into itself." 

This science of the spirit is again 
threefold: (a) the philosophy of the 
Subjective Spirit, (b) the philosophy of 
the Objective Spirit, and (c) the phi- 
losophy of the Absolute Spirit. 

Within the sphere of this last philoso- 
phy we find the Science of Right, 
whose first principle, therefore, is the 
existence of the universal, impersonal 
Will outside of which individual wills 
have no true being; or, which is, with 
Hegel, identical, it is the absolute ex- 
istence of all the possible determina- 
tions of individual liberty. These 
determinations have an intrinsic, es- 
sential relation to the absolute or sub- 
jective free Will, such that the relation 
of these determinations to the absolute 
or subjective Will, constitute the inher- 
ent Rights of the absolute or subjec- 
tive Will. 

Right, thus conceived, has, a threefold 
manner of existence. It exists, first, 
independently, and in itself; and in 
this manner of existence it exhibits 



238 CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



formal or absolute Right. It exists, 
secondly, as the determining motive 
of human wills; in this state of existence 
it is morality. Finally, it exists as 
historically manifested in the life and 
social institutions of peoples. In this 
mode of existence, it is denominated 
" Ethos," or juridical custom. 

Now, Hegel's abstract or formal 
Right is Kant's pure Right of nature 
or natural Right. Its root is person- 
ality, and its first principle analagous 
to the Kantian first principle of 
Right, viz, : "Be a person yourself and 
consider everybody else a person." 
Hegel's " Morality " is the motive which 
urges the determinations of the absolute 
or the human wills to become identical 
with the absolute Will. His Ethos, 
however, or juridical custom, is the true 
root of Right, as we understand Right. 
Accordingly, Hegel's " Ethos," is the 
idea of the absolute, free, impersonal 
Will made mundane, or realized in 
the actual world. It is, in his sys- 
tem, the ultimate, and most perfect 
expression of the Absolute or "All- 
Spirit." 



THE DOCTRINE OF RIGHT. 239 



Now, there are three grades of this 
evolved and actualized Spirit or abso- 
lute impersonal liberty, viz.: the family, 
society, the State. 

The family is the immediate or 
natural, ethical spirit, whose aim is an 
imperfect union of personal wills with 
the absolute Will by mutual love. 

Society is the mediate, ethical spirit, 
whose end is a loftier but yet an im- 
perfect union of personal wills with the 
absolute Will by the mutual removal of 
all impediments to the pursuit of in- 
dividual ends. 

The State is the supreme grade of 
ethical being, or the ethical spirit. It is 
the finished reality of the ethical idea; 
the reality of the substantial absolute 
Will. 

It is therefore the State which, of 
itself, is the rational being, the abso- 
lute End-in-Itself, the term in which 
liberty attains to its highest Right. The 
State, therefore, possesses the highest 
jurisdiction over all other wills, that is, 
over all determinations of the absolute 
liberty or Will, so that the highest duty 
of these determinations is. in conse- 



240 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



quence, to be conformed to the absolute 
Will or to the will of the State. The 
ultimate destiny, therefore, of man, is 
to be a member of the State; for the 
State, according to Hegelians, is the 
absolute spirit existing in the world 
and consciously realizing itself in the 
world. The State, in a word, is the 
Divine will, as spirit present in the 
world, and evolving itself into the 
real and organic form of this visible 
world. Hence, in the Hegelian theory, 
all Right is identical with the will of the 
State, and, therefore, the State is the 
source of every individual Right. This 
is in practice, abstruse and transcen- 
dental as it may seem in theory, the 
doctrine of Right which rules the world 
to-day. In strictness, it is, anyone 
would say, but an exaggerated struc- 
ture of overwrought fancies, a mere 
poetic juggle with terms and ideas. 

If, then, it deserves to be counted 
and treated as a philosophy, it be- 
comes, at the same time, evident that it 
is a philosophy which, exhibits the most 
licentious form of Pantheism. As such, 
therefore, it simply eliminates the very 



THE DOCTRINE OF RIGHT. 



241 



postulate and groundwork of all Right, 
the liberty of the individual will. For 
there is indeed no liberty possible where 
not only each determination or exercise 
of created wills is a necessary phase of the 
absolute impersonal Will, but where, 
furthermore, the very reality and ex- 
istence of these wills is nothing but the 
same necessary expression of the abso- 
lute Spirit necessarily evolving itself, 
first, into the individual, then, into the 
family, later, into society, and, finally, 
into the State. 

Moreover, it is a contradiction in 
terms, for in this theory, individual 
wills enjoy freedom, and yet they 
are at the absolute disposition of the 
will of the State. Besides its pan- 
theistic feature, or, rather, as a conse- 
quence of its Pantheism, the Hegelian 
doctrine of Right eliminates the idea of 
God. For the Absolute or Spirit which 
it substitutes for God is, in the first 
instance, a mere idea ; nay, further- 
more, it is an idea without an object 
with which it deals, and without a sub- 
ject whose idea it is. It is a thought 

without a thinker and without an object 
C E —16 



242 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



to think upon. It is not simply fiction, 
but, even for the most fair-minded and 
unbiased, it is the most intangible of 
fictions, It eliminates the idea of cre- 
ation, for it removes the Creator. All 
religion accordingly, every idea of a 
Church, every notion of ecclesiastical 
law, is equally eliminated or denied, 
and the laws and the Rights founded 
upon them simply reduced to hollow 
expressions. It is a doctrine which 
evacuates the immortality of the soul, 
and with it, the idea and sanction of a 
future retribution. In it the possibility 
and the fact of a revelation is a mere 
nothing, and therefore the doctrine of 
a heaven and a hell becomes a tradi- 
tional superstition. 

A moral Conscience, in this system, is 
a figment of fanatic minds, and in its 
place is substituted a legal Conscience, 
not, however, founded upon the ob- 
jective law of justice, and the final 
conditions of our rational nature, but 
upon the changeful will of the State. 

The State, in this code of Ethics, is 
supreme. It is God. Therefore, iden- 
tity with the will of the State is the 



THE DOCTRINE OE RIGHT. 



243 



sum of human perfection. Its Bights 
supersede the inalienable Rights of the 
individual and the antecedent Rights of 
the family. Divorce is. accordingly, law- 
ful, since marriage is placed within the 
province of the State. The State is the 
prime and natural educator of the child. 

Liberty of Conscience is impossible, 
resting, as it does, upon the liberty of 
distinct personalities and the existence 
of a moral Conscience. 

With these safeguards all removed, 
human society becomes, as a logical 
outcome, plainly impossible. There is 
no diversity of wills, that is, multitude 
of distinct individuals, all being 1 but a 
necessary evolution of one and the same 
absolute Spirit or impersonal Will. There 
is no authority, inasmuch as the force 
which governs everywhere is the blind 
necessity with which the absolute im- 
personal Will is evolved, a necessity 
whose ultimate foundation is an abso- 
lute idea without a mind to think it or 
an object upon which it thinks. 

But not to pursue still farther the series 
of simply outrageous sequences growing 
naturally out of this absolute Panthe- 



244 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



ism, suffice it to say, in conclusion, 
that this doctrine, fostered perhaps 
unwittingly by the modern State, is, in 
Europe at least, culminating in a tyran- 
nical Caesarism, alongside of which 
there is, as its most natural counterpart 
and the necessary outcome of its en- 
croachment upon the Rights of the in- 
dividual and of the community, a deeply 
rooted and widespread Anarchy and 
Communism or antagonism of the indi- 
vidual and communal will to Caesar- 
ism or the concrete expression of the 
absolute will of the State. 

With these strictures upon the ma- 
terialistic theory of the origin and nature 
of Right; upon the Kantian autonomy 
of Reason, upon the Historic School of 
Right, and upon the Pantheistic Csesar- 
ism of the Hegelians, I submit the doc- 
trine of Right, and with it, my course of 
lectures upon General Ethics. 

As I proposed at starting, I have en- 
deavored to be as comprehensive as 
possible in my matter, as plain and 
simple in my language as the matter 
would permit, and didactic rather than 
eclectic or polemic in my treatment. 



THE DOCTRINE OF EIGHT. 



245 



For I was invited here to teach; and 
I would. I take it. have come very tardy 
off in my duty to you. did I indulge my 
vanity in the analytical pursuit of four 
or five moral subtleties, instead of cov- 
ering*, as requested, the whole field of 
General Ethics: or did I twist and turn, 
polish and refine my phrases into an 
unintelligible scientific jargon: or did I, 
finally, seek to impose my own doctrinal 
fancies, preferences or inclinations to 
find fault with those of other Christian 
moralists, instead of putting before you. 
in the capacity of a professor, the gen- 
erally admitted doctrine of the unani- 
mous body of moralists within the pale 
of Catholic Christianity. 

That I have been so bold as to at- 
tempt to cover the whole field of Gen- 
eral Ethics in five lectures, is explained 
by the following correspondence between 
myself and the Right ReverendPresident 
whose energy presides over and animates 
the work of this School. In replv to mv 
request that he should suggest the 
ethical matter to be treated, monsignor 
wrote me "that the Committee on 
Studies desired to leave the lecturers 



246 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



perfectly free in the choice of their 
topics." " You may therefore," he con- 
tinues, " choose any part of Ethics for 
treatment. But profiting by your kind- 
ness in asking for a suggestion from me, I 
would like to see General Ethics or the 
supreme principles of that science de- 
veloped at the first session. This seems 
nearly necessary in view of our ex- 
pected audience, as well as of an or- 
derly course to be followed out in the 
coming years; as Ethics, no doubt, will 
form a regular and standing topic of 
every year's session. You would thus 
lay the very foundations for the future 
lecturers in this branch of our work." 

You agree with me, ladies and gentle- 
men, that I have taken the Right Rev- 
erend Bishop's suggestion. If I have not 
perhaps, as I should have, laid the foun- 
dations for the future lecturers in Spe- 
cial Ethics broad and deep, their 
genius and ability will, I am confident, 
supply this lacking breadth and depth, 
while their charity will, I am equally 
confident, condone my shortcomings 
and oversight; and thus, at some future 
session, repay your study and devotion. 



THE DOCTRINE OF RIGHT. 



247 



Meanwhile, I thank you. ladies and 
gentlemen, for your considerateness 
to me, and will, with your permission, 
embrace this opportunity to compliment 
you most heartily upon your multi- 
tudinous presence, and upon the hififh 
order of scientific appreciation which 
has. even at this early date, established 
the future success of the Columbian 
Catholic Summer School : thus giving 
Catholic thought and educational enter- 
prise a new and a higher prestige, not in 
Wisconsin only, but in the broad and 
noble West and throughout the length 
and breadth of our free, our native land, 



Literature 



ANALYTICAL INDEX 



Literature 



mm 

OR the convenience of those who 
may find leisure to pursue a course 
of reading in connection with these Lec- 
tures, or who may desire to devote more 
time and study to the doctrine set forth 
in them, the following references will, 
it is hoped, not prove entirely without 
advantage. The authorities quoted are, 
almost without exception, conservative, 
up to date, and representative. For 
obvious reasons, they are mostly Catholic. 
To preserve some little show of method in 
referring to them, complete works on 
Ethics are placed first; these are followed 
by Review Articles bearing upon the sub- 
ject-matter of the Lectures, which have 
been selected from the leading Catholic 
periodicals in English, French, Italian 
and German. 

Some Complete Works on Ethics 
St. Thos. Aquinas. "Summa Theo- 
logica," la 2ae quest. I-XXI, qq. L- 
LXV, qq. XC-C. 

251 



252 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



Costa Rosetti, S. J. "Phil. Moral." 
P. I, cc. i-iv, P. II, c. i, sec. i. 

Ferretti, Aug., S. J., "Institutiones, 
Philosophise Moralis," Pars I, cc. i-vin. 

Kathrein, Vict., S. J. "Moral Phi- 
losophies 2 Bd. Bd. 1, 1 Th., Buch. I- 
VIII. 

Tapparelli, D'Azeglio, S. J. "Essai 
Theoretique De Droit Naturel." 2 vol. 
(from Italian "Saggio Theoretico"). 
Vol. I, Livr. I, cc. i-vin, Livr. II, cc. 

Ill, IV. 

Ming, J. J., S. J. "Data of Modern 
Ethics Examined." 1 vol. (mainly 
against Spencer), cc. i-xvi. 

Hill, Walt., S. J. "Moral Philos- 
ophy." 1 vol. (best English text). Part 
I, cc. i-viii, Part. II, c. i. 

Louage, A., C. S. C. "A Course of 
Philosophy." 1 vol. Part III., First 
Dissertat., cc. i-ni. 

Rica by, Jos., S. J. "Moral Philoso- 
phy." 1 vol. (a popular text-book on 
Moral Philosophy). Part I, cc. i-x, 
Part II, c. v. 

Humphrey, Wm.,S.J. "Conscience 
and Law." 1 vol. (a succinct and log- 
ical treatise). 



LITERATURE. 



253 



Poland, Wm., S. J. "Fundamental 
Ethics," 1 vol. (A brief text after the 
Socratic Method), cc. i-xii. 

Hettinger, Franz, D.D. "Natural 
Religion." 1 vol. chaps, viii and ix. 
(It is translated by H. S. Bowden of 
the English Oratory.) 

Hewitt — ,G. S. P. " Problems of the 
Age." 1 vol. Part II., Studies in St. 
Augustine, cc. i-v (treats of Sin, of 
the Will, and the mystery of Human 
Probation). 

O'Reilly, Edm. J., S. J. "The Rela- 
tions of the Church to Society," chap, i 
(on the Natural Law). 

Cathrein, Victor, S. J. "Sittenlehre 
des Darwinismus, Eine Kritik der Ethik 
Herbert Spencers." (Bd. 8, ss. 1-147 
der Erganzungshefte in den " Stimmen 
aus Maria Laach"). 

NOSTIK— RlENECK, ROBT. V., S. J. 

"Das Problem der Cultur." (Bd. 11 der 
Erganzungshefte in den Stimmen, 
etc). 

Champenois 1'Abbe, "Lecons de Phi- 
losophic chretienne et de Droit naturel 
selon les principes de St. Thomas." 

Lilly, W. S. "On Right and Wrong," 



254 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



cc. i-v (Controversial against Material- 
istic and Evolutionary Ethics.) 

Gibbons, J. Cardinal. "Our Chris- 
tian Heritage," cc. Ill, xi, xn, xiv, xix, 

xx, XXIII, XXIV. 

Ullathorne, Bishop. "The Endow- 
ments of Man," Lect. i, v, vi, vn, vin, 
IX, x. 

Ricaby, Jos., S. J. "Aquinas Eth- 
icus." (Eng. of St. Thomas' Prima- 
Secundae) Questions 1-21, 50-65, 90- 
100. 

Smith, Geo. H. "Elements of Right 
and of the Law." Book I, cc. i-v 
(against Bentham and Austin's theory, 
that law and Right are the expression 
of the will of the State, a theory prev- 
alent in America and in England since 
Bentham's time). 

Janet, Paul. "Final Causes." 1 vol. 
(entire work useful); "The Theory of 
Morality." 1 vol. (a critique from the 
standpoint of a Christian Eclectic 
upon the doctrines of the leading mod- 
ern representatives of Moral Science. 
A sufficiently reverend work, although 
not always safe, because of the novel- 
ties of the author's private views). 



LI TEE A TUBE. 



255 



Ward, Wm, Geo. "The Philosophy 
of Theism." (Two volumes, both good, 
but especially Vol. I. Essays in, IV, VI, 
vil, ix. and Vol. II. Essays x, xi. xn. 

XIV, XVII ). 

Schmid. Dr. Al. " Erkenntnisslehre.'* 
2 Bd. Bd. I. 3er Absclmitt. vn. Seite 208. 
(An excellent resume of ethical doc- 
trines. ) 

Carrox. L. " La Morale Utilitaire." 
(An excellent exposition and refutation 
of Utilitarianism.) 

Meyer. Theod.. S. J. Die Grund- 
satze der Sittlichkeit and des Rechtes." 
(A very able study and refutation of 
the modern theories of Right.) 

Martineau. J as. Types of Ethical 
Theory." (A comparative study of the 
diverse schools — except the Catholic — 
of Ethics, from the standpoint of Con- 
servative Protestantism. A very able 
and suo*o*estive authority.) 

Smith. Geo. H. The Law of Pri- 
vate Rio-lit." (--In the following pao-es 
I have attempted to expound the true 
theory of the law. which, though o*en- 
erallv recognized by the jurists of other 
countries and former ages, seems, since 



256 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



the time of Austin, to have been lost to the 
profession in this country and England, 
and, indeed, to the English-speaking race 
generally." — The Author, in Preface.) 
Review Articles 
The Dublin Review. Mr. Mill o?i 
the Foundation of Morality, Jan., 1872, 
Art. Ill, p. 42 ; The Extent of Free 
Will, July, 1881, Art. II, p. 29 ; Ethics 
of Animal Suffering, Jan., 1888, Art. 
VIII, p. 166 ; Laforets Moral Phi- 
losophy, March, 1857, Art. VI, p. 403 ; 
On Responsibility, Nov. 1862, Art. V, 
p. 155 ; Ethics and Theism, Vol. LXIX, 
p. 1 ; Evolution and Ethics, July, 1893, 
Art. VI, p. 589 ; Herbert Spencer on 
Justice, Oct., 1891, Art. I, p. 245 ; 
Ethics in Its Bearing on Theism, Jan., 
1880, Art. IV, p. 101. 

Brownson's Review. Rights and 
Duties, Vol. IX, p. 523 ; The Nature 
of Law, Vol. VI, p. 543 ; The ^Esthetic 
Theory, Vol. Ill, p. 253 ; Christian 
Ethics, Vol. Ill, p. 137 ; Jouffroy's 
Ethical System, Vol. II, p. 53 ; Hil- 
dretKs Theory of Morals, Vol. 1, p. 
328 ; The Primitive Man Not a Savage, 
Vol. XXII, p. 205. 



LITERATURE. 



257 



The American Catholic Quarter- 
ly. Right and Wrong: Their Relation 
to Mans Ultimate End, Vol. VI. no. 24. 
art. X: The Problem of Man } s Destiny , 
etc.. Vol. VII, no. 25. art. IX: Morality 
and Life, Vol. X. no. 39. art. IV. 

The Moxth. Modern Ethics. Vol. 
XL p. 259; The Study of Ethics, Vol. 
XXXIV. pp. 236 and 346; The Influ- 
ence of Morality on Laic % Yo\. LIII, p. 
197; Stephens on the Science qf Ethics, 
Vol. XLVL p. 5S2. 

The Catholic World. The Law of 
God and the Regulations of the World, 
Vol. XXII. p. 223 : The Bake of Argyle 
on Law, Vol. VI. p. 595. Vol. IX. p. 746 ; 
Foundation of Morality, Vol. XXX. p. 
811 ; Comparative Morality of Cath- 
olic and Protestant Countries, Vol. IX. 
p. 52: Recent Attacks on Catholic Codes 
of Morality. Vol. XXXV. p. 145. 

La Civilta Cattolica. La -Morale 
del Positivismo, 1S93. Vol. VI. p. 306; 
La Morale Giudaica, 1893. Vol. V, pp. 
145. 269: La Felicitk nelFInferno del 
Prof Mivart, 1893. Vol. V. p. 672; Se 
Dio sia Causa del Male Segnata.mente 
Male, 1887. Vol. V. p. 142; La 

C E .— 17 



258 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



Coscienza Dei Liberi Pensatori e La 
Morale Commune, 1886, Vol. Ill, p. 566. 

Lbs ICtudes. Droit et Devoir, &c, 
1863, Vol. VIII, p. 444; Etude de Droit 
Naturel, 1872, Vol. XXVI, p. 757; Le 
Droit Naturel d^apres Suarez, 1866, 
Vol. XVI, p. 289; La Morale philoso- 
phique avant et d'apres V Evangile, 
1856, Vol. I, p. 187; De Principe scien- 
tijique de la Morale et les TJtilitaires, 
1865, Vol. XII, p. 596; De V intervention 
de Dieu dans la vie Morale, 1860, Vol. 
V, p. 202; La Conscience ou la Regie 
des Actions humaines, 1862, Vol. VIII, 
p. 407; Dieu et la Conscience, 1870-71, 
Vol. XXV, p. 474; La Morale de 
VEglise et la Morale Naturelle, 1867, 
Vol. XVIII, p. 634; De V Union de la 
Religion et de la Morale, 1872, Vol. 
XXVI, p. 634; La Morale d" Epicure, 
1879, Vol. XI, p. 178; L'Ordre Morale, 
1875, Vol. XXXII, p. 182. 

Die Stimmen - aus - Maria - Laach. 
Der Gehorsam gegen die Menschlichen 
Gesetze, 13 Bd., ss. 298, 388 ; Gott und 
die Naturordnung, 13 Bd., ss. 314, 
424, 479; Die Ruddhistische Moral, 
33 Bd., s. 17; Die Laienmoral Herbert 



LITERATURE. 



259 



Spencers, 28 Bd., s. 225; Wahlrecht 
unci Wahlpflicht, 29 Bd., s. 105; Die 
Gesellshaft fur Ethische Cuttur, 44 Bd. 
ss. 385, 517; Die Idee der Gerechtigkeit 
in den Social istischen Systems, Bd. 43, 
ss. 401, 465; Die Zweckordnung in der 
JSTatur, 11 Bd., s. 292; Kultur, ein Mo- 
dernes Schlagicort, 3 Bd., s. 1; Die 
Wahre Kultur, 3 Bd., s. 125; Der Ccesa- 
rismus, 3 Bd., s. 393; Die "Cultur" 
und das Cultur-Examen, 19 Bd., s. 
125; Das Dogma and die Moral, 12 
Bd., s. 528. 



Analytical Index 



mm 

Lecture First 

/CHRISTIAN Ethics assumes from 
Natural Theology that there is a 
God. From Cosmology it further realizes 
that this universe of things came out from 
God and will return to Him in virtue of 
an order founded in creatures them- 
selves, revealed in their native propensi- 
ties, and to be eventually realized in the 
possession of that object whose fruition 
is ordained to constitute their final per- 
fection. Man is no exception to this 
origin and destiny. Like other crea- 
tures he came forth from God with an 
end to reach in the exercise of his na- 
tive powers. This end which we are 
finally to determine from the specify- 
ing elements of his activity — his reason, 
his will, and its object, the " all-good " — 
is proximately and subjectively identical 
with his inborn appetite and pursuit of 
happiness. As. however, perfect happi- 
ness in its subjective phases, is the 

261 



262 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



knowledge and love of the supreme 
good, it is attainable by the fruition of no 
finite object, and cannot, in conse- 
quence, be ultimately realized during 
the term of man's present existence. 
His present happiness — for this life is 
not without its true felicity — is a de- 
pendent one. It rests, remotely, upon 
such security of future blessedness as 
his probationary life here shall merit. 
/Proximately, and in point of fact, it 
grows out of the conformity of his hu- 
man acts, or the life-sum of his human 
activities, with the moral order. Human 
actions, therefore, in conformity with 
the moral order, constitute the ethical 
basis of man's earthly happiness. J 

Not every action, however, emanating 
from man is a human act, nor, in con- 
sequence, a factor in his happiness, nor 
therefore the subject-matter of Ethics. 
A human act, from the ethical stand- 
point, must be, or is, ordinarily, a free 
act, and in every instance must be at 
least a voluntary action, that is one 
elicited, if not also " imperated " by the 
will under the guidance of a knowledge 
of the end which the action has in view. 



ANALYTICAL INDEX. 



263 



Such an act, if elicited or even " im- 
perated " by the will of man acting 
under the conditions, first, of a freedom 
from invincible ignorance, and secondly, 
of an immunity from so great a passion, 
fear, or violence, as would unhinge the 
reason, conduces to man's happiness in 
the proportion in which it is an ethically 
good or an ethically bad act. 

The problem, accordingly, submitted 
in the study of Ethics is fourfold : (1) 
To determine what constitutes a human 
act, morally good or morally bad ; (2) 
to ascertain the ultimate source of the 
obligation urging man to do morally 
good and shun morally evil acts ; (3) 
to resolve how we are to know which 
acts, as they occur in the individual, are 
morally good and therefore licit, which 
are morally bad and therefore illicit ; 
(4) to fix the ultimate origin of the Rights 
and Duties by which man, in his social 
attitude, pursues certain lines of moral 
action, and is bound to fulfill a given 
class of obligations. 

Lecture Second 

That there are morally good and 
morally evil actions is a fact which is 



264 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



hardly impugned. The controversies 
turn on the basis of this distinction. 
Positivist moralists repudiate a natural 
basis of morality. They found the dis- 
tinction of good and bad in all human 
actions upon a positive law or decree. 
For the atheists and deists of this school 
— Rousseau, Hobbes, Spinoza — the 
source of this law is the human will; 
for the theists of this same school — 
Des Cartes, Grotius, Pufendorf — the 
Divine Will has decreed what is good 
and what is evil in human action. Ev- 
idently, however, this entire school of 
moralists begs the question, and further 
professes a thesis, which is not only false, 
but one which in its sequel is eminently 
absurd. 

Morality, in fact, must, as all other 
schools insist, have a natural basis. But 
what this natural basis is, we find 
gravely misunderstood. Outside the 
Positivist school, indeed, all moralists 
found the distinction of good and evil 
in human action upon the inherent rela- 
tion of the human act to man's chief 
good. The diversity, therefore, of con- 
flicting views and, consequently, the 



ANALYTICAL INDEX. 



265 



error into which they have fallen, is due 
to the nature of the object assigned as 
man's supreme good. Two schools pre- 
vail. 

The first — Eudsemonistic — exalts tem- 
poral well-being into the position 
of the greatest good of man. One 
section of this school finds an action 
good or bad, in proportion as it pro- 
motes the well-being of the individual 
(Egoism); that is, in as far as it furthers 
either his sensual happiness (Hedonism) 
or, more generally, his manifold self- 
interest (Epicurism). The other teaches 
that it is good or bad to the extent to 
which it advances man's social well- 
being (Utilitarianism), which some — 
Cumberland, Shaftesbury, etc. — take to 
be "the furtherance of mutual benevo- 
lence among men " (Moral Empiricism); 
which others — Bentham, Mill, Bain, 
Spencer — look upon as " the greatest 
good of the greatest number" (Altru- 
ism), and which others, finally — the 
Leibnitz- Wolfian school — understand to 
be " the harmonic evolution of our 
social nature" (Perfectionism). This 
numerous school of moralists errs by 



266 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



defect. For, while it is true that an 
action is in many senses good or bad 
in the measure that it promotes our 
temporal well-being, its essential moral- 
ity cannot be measured by this stand- 
ard. In actions whose good or evil 
does not grow out of the precept or 
prohibition of positive law, morality is 
immutably inherent. It cannot, there- 
fore, be gauged by a standard which is 
inconstant, temporal, and subject to 
vicissitude. Hence, the radical objec- 
tion to the Eudaemonistic school is that 
it places man's supreme good in a con- 
tingent and variable object of human 
endeavor. 

The second — Deontologic — school 
seeks to avoid this error. It assigns a 
fixed and unvarying object through 
conformitv with which man is ren- 
dered supremely happy, and his acts 
morally good. For one class in this 
school this object is a faculty — the 
Moral Faculty — ordained to approve 
or disapprove, and thereby deter- 
mine what actions are good, what actions 
are to be judged evil. Reid, and with 
him the Scotch School, has termed this 



ANALYTICAL INDEX. 



267 



faculty our " Natural Instinct of Moral- 
ity ; " Hutcheson calls it the "Moral 
Sense; " Schopenhauer has given it the 
name of the " Sympathetic Faculty," 
and Herbart has dignified it with the 
title of our " Moral Taste." For the 
other class, this object is a nature, or an 
absolute law, to which man is by his 
actions to ultimately assimilate himself. 
For Plato, this was the nature of God, 
the absolute good ; for Zeno and the 
Stoics, man's nature, or the sum of our 
natural propensities ; for the Panthe- 
ists — Schelling, Fichte, Hegel — the will 
of the sovereign State (Statolatry), the 
last expression of the absolute, and, 
finally, for Kant, the Categoric Imper- 
ative, or the absolute law or dictate, of 
Practical Reason. But it is evident 
that the professors of this school who 
assign a sensitive faculty as the ultimate 
criterion of good and bad in human 
actions, falsely assume that morality is 
a sensitive property falling within the 
sphere of sense-perception. On the 
other hand, no human act will liken 
man to God in the Platonic sense. The 
Stoic principle is the pure law itself of 



268 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



wickedness, while the Pantheistic basis, 
besides eliminating free will, the very 
subject of moral acts, postulates all the 
fictions of the Idealistic system. Fin- 
ally, the Purism of Emanuel Kant er- 
roneously advances that, notwithstand- 
ing the fact of a God, the law of Pure 
Reason is something absolute. It, more- 
over, requires in human actions the 
practically impossible, viz., that man's 
actions be not only moral, but each one 
perfect in its morality. This standard, 
further, renders a relatively inferior 
moral act an immoral one, and it con- 
founds the mere character of morality 
in actions with the grade and excellence 
of their moral goodness. 

Yet, even for Christian moralists, the 
ultimate ontologic basis of morality 
does, in the very nature of things, re- 
side in the relation of human acts to 
some absolute objective principle. 
Moreover, this principle, in its formal 
and absolute expression, can, as they 
argue, be no other than the Divine 
Goodness, or, which is tantamount, the 
Divine Nature conceived as the abso- 
lute sanctity and absolute order adjust- 



ANALYTICAL INDEX. 



269 



ing all action, within and without God, 
to its appointed term. In its more im- 
mediate expression, this same ontologic 
standard is the objective order of things 
itself, exhibiting, as it does, on the one 
hand, the wisdom and sanctity of the 
Divine Ordinator, and on the other, the 
nature, laws and propensities of created 
things to fulfill their appointed ends. 
Since, however, this objective order 
must, in its character of criterion, be 
known to the moral agent, or, further, 
have also a logical basis, and, as the 
agent is of necessity guided in his 
actions by his practical reason, the 
logical, though dependent and relative, 
Standard of Morality is the objective 
order of things as known to the prac- 
tical reason. This knowledge is one 
with the " evident principles of our 
practical reason" which is, therefore, 
another, and, perhaps, more familiar 
expression for the same logical criterion 
of morality. Finally, as the normal man 
acts only in so far as his reason is in- 
formed with these self-evident, prac- 
tical first principles, or with the objec- 
tive order of things, the last, and still 



270 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



more familiar expression of the generic 
criterion of good and bad in the human 
act is its conformity or difformity with 
reason, or with man's rational nature. 

The specific criterion of morality 
is the standard by which we ascer- 
tain the morality of a given indi- 
vidual act. It lies in the conformity or 
difformity of the act with the moral 
order or general standard. To ascer- 
tain, however, whether this conformity 
exists in any given act, we must be 
guided by the object which specifies 
it, the end it has in view, and the cir- 
cumstances in which it exists. 

Generically speaking, therefore, the 
criterion of good and bad in any human 
action is its conformity or difformity with 
reason, or the objective order of things. 
Specifically considering, however, this 
or that act, the criterion of its morality 
is the collective morality of its object, 
its end, and the circumstances under 
which it is performed. 

Lecture Third 

Man is not at liberty to observe or 
ignore that which his Moral Standard has 
defined. He must " do good and avoid 



A NA L YTICA L INDEX. 



271 



evil/' for the moral criterion is but a 
speculative rule guiding his judgment 
of good and bad in human actions. It 
does not control his practice. This ar- 
gues the necessity and the existence 
of a force founded, like the ethical 
norm itself, in the very nature of 
things, and ordained to so govern 
man's will as to reduce his theory 
to his practice of moral conduct. This 
force we term moral obligation. It is 
the universal motive for which, me- 
diately or immediately, we " do good 
and avoid evil." When analyzed it ex- 
hibits a fourfold element. It implies 
an author by whom the obligation is 
imposed; the moral order which it aims 
to promote; a rational nature which 
alone it effects; and the moral ligamen 
or virtue in which it formally resides. 
It is, accordingly, not inaptly defined: 
" a bond imposed by the author of nature 
upon man, constraining him either to 
freely observe, or, of a necessity, to sub- 
mit to the divinely instituted order gov- 
erning all things." 

Evidently, therefore, this moral neces- 
sity is, in virtue of the object it has in 



272 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



view, directly or indirectly, proximately 
or remotely, the ground-motive or 
coercing necessity wherever moral con- 
duct is enjoined. For, on the one hand, 
the last appeal in any moral act, from 
whatever source ordained, is to the integ- 
rity of the moral order involved in the 
act. 

On the other hand, however, all order 
touching conduct whether ethical or 
juridical, is based finally upon the di- 
vinely instituted objective ordination of 
all things to their appointed ends, the 
lowest by the middlemost, the middle- 
most by the highest. Every other obli- 
gation, therefore, is finally grounded 
upon this natural obligation to maintain 
intact the order which God has put into 
all things. 

It is evident, however, that a prin- 
ciple or necessity of this broad coercive 
force supposes a source or origin in 
nature itself with which it is at root 
identical, and from which it springs as 
from an immediate cause. 

Obligation connotes law ; therefore, 
the origin or source of moral obligation 
is the Natural Law. Its existence has, 



ANALYTICAL INDEX. 



273 



it is true, been impugned. But that 
there is a law of nature is a conviction 
co-extensive with mankind itself. More- 
over, the internal experience of every 
man attests it. The fact, further, that 
man was created by God and for God 
as an end to be attained through the 
regulated use of his rational activity, 
confirms it. Nay, its very analysis, 
apart from any other argument, suf- 
ficiently evinces its necessity and reality. 
It is an immutable law, and in its first 
principles is so self-evident that its 
most general precepts cannot be in- 
vincibly ignored by any normal man. 

Thus among these universal precepts, 
the very first, most evident, and that one 
in which man's moral obligation to 
moral conduct is prescribed by nature 
herself, is the principle, " Maintain 
the divinely founded and sanctioned 
order of things." It is termed the First 
Principle of the Natural Law, and is 
the root of all moral obligation. For 
the ground-motive, to which all moral 
conduct is to be finally referred,, should 
be a principle so reductively ultimate 
that it exhibit that which, in every 

C. E.—18 



274 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



matter of law, is ordained by reason of 
itself, and is, moreover, the last motive 
which can be assigned for all that is 
naturally ordained or forbidden. It 
should, further, be a principle under- 
lying all the natural Rights and Duties 
of man ; and finally, one which in the 
practical order is so self-evident that it 
in no way leans upon another more 
patent and conclusive than itself. 

Still, neither the first principle of the 
Natural Law, nor the law itself, is more 
absolute than the nature and order in 
which both are founded and for which 
they legislate. They suppose a source, 
a Mind which has conceived, and a Will 
which has decreed, both the nature and 
order we find in things. Such a source 
can be but the Eternal Law of all things 
existing in God, which is, accordingly, 
the absolute origin of all moral obliga- 
tions, and the final motive why man 
must " do good and avoid evil." 

That there is an Eternal Law is be- 
yond all controversy for those who 
admit a God, Who is at the same time 
an all-wise Creator of nature and na- 
ture's powers and laws. 



ANALYTICAL INDEX. 



275 



Some — prominently Kant, in his 
"automony of pure reason," — have 
repudiated the Eternal Law as the 
source of moral and juridical obliga- 
tion. Kant has substituted the au- 
tonomy of pure reason, a doctrine of 
lay-morality and lay-rights which di- 
vorces Ethics, Right and Jurisprudence 
from Conscience, Religion, God. It is 
plain, however, that a doctrine which 
ignores God is adverse to the very con- 
cept of moral obligation. Moreover, 
this autonomy of pure reason assumes 
that man is an end for himself ; and even 
from Kant's own standpoint, the theory 
is one which is self-contradictory and 
fatalistic, if not pantheistic in its out- 
come. 

It remains true, therefore, that the 
proximate source of moral action is the 
obligation of the Natural Law, which, 
with St. Thomas, we define to be a 
" participation of the Eternal Law in 
the rational creature." 

Lecture Fourth 

The Standard of Morality determines 
which human actions are morally good, 
which morally evil. The Natural Law 



276 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



founded on the one hand in rational 
nature, and on the other emanating from 
the Eternal Law, furnishes the objective, 
ultimate basis of the natural obligation 
which enjoins morally good actions and 
prohibits morally evil acts. Yet, neither 
the Moral Standard nor the Natural 
Law adjudicate finally upon personal 
conduct or individual actions. This 
decision calls for a tribunal subjective 
to the individual, or for an arbiter that 
will determine, for his personal guid- 
ance, which acts of his in the light of the 
moral order are licit, which acts are to 
be omitted as illicit. 

This judgment is the province of the 
human Conscience. Some have called 
Conscience a faculty, but it is psycho- 
logically considered an act only of the 
practical as opposed to the speculative 
reason, by which the principles of the 
Moral Standard are applied to and 
made to inform our individual actions. 
Inasmuch, now, as these actions may be 
acts already performed or still forthcom- 
ing, this judgment may be either retro- 
spective or prospective. The former is 
the accusing or consequent, the latter the 



.4 NA L YTICA L IXDEX. 



277 



antecedent or directive Conscience. 
This latter Conscience is man's proximate 
rule of action and the formative prin- 
ciple of his moral conduct. 

Conscience, considered in this light of 

o 

a guide to individual conduct, may, 
from the standpoint of the objective 
truth of our moral judgment, be right 
or wrong. It may. looked at in this 
same light, be a certain Conscience, a 
doubtful, or a probable one, accord- 
ing to the firmness of the assent 
which we lend to our moral judgment 
of an action. Finally, if we dwell upon 
the habit which it induces in the soul, 
the Conscience may be tender, lax, 
scrupulous, or perplexed. In all these 
conditions it remains physically at 
least our guide in moral conduct. 

But while it is evident that Con- 
science, in certain of these states, cannot 
be a trustworthy guide in moral actions, 
and an unbiased tribunal, it always and 
everywhere remains true that Conscience, 
on the one condition that it is morally 
certain, is the proximate rule of human 
action, and is for this reason that Con- 
science which we are at libertv to fol- 



278 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



low or not when it permits an action, 
but which we must follow when it com- 
mands or forbids it. Conscience then, for 
the individual in question, carries with 
its dictate the force of a moral obligation. 
For Conscience is the law itself applied 
to our individual actions, permitting 
them, enjoining or forbidding them. 
Where, then, the application is clear, 
and the permission, injunction, or 
prohibition is certain, Conscience 
binds with all the force of the law in- 
volved. 

While, however, Conscience, in this 
way, adjusts our single actions to the 
moral standard, and, in virtue of the law 
whose concrete application it is, urges 
to good and restrains from evil, it leaves 
the will physically free. In this free- 
dom of the will under the law of Con- 
science to conform or not conform its 
acts to the moral order, is rooted the 
first feature of all moral acts — their 
imputability, or their attribution, to the 
moral agent for praise or blame, an im- 
putability which extends, not merely to 
the act itself, but to its natural and 
consequent effects. In virtue, in turn, 



AXALYTICAL IXDEX. 



27<» 



of the imputabilitv of the same act. we 
gather its merit, or demerit, the sec- 
ond characteristic of all moral acts. 
For every moral act to the extent, first, 
that it is imputable, and. secondly, in so 
far as it promotes a gain or entails a 
loss not already and in every sense due 
or incurred in the order of strict justice, 
is everywhere, even with God. deserv- 
ing of merit or demerit. 

Conscience alone, however, will not 
render man's conduct unfailingly moral. 
It is an efficacious law securing con- 
formity with the moral order only 
where man is disposed to follow its dic- 
tate constantly, promptly, and with a rel- 
ish to act according to reason. Now. the 
moral virtues alone create this disposi- 
tion. Hence their necessity and. further, 
their number, for there are four powers 
invariably concerned in the activity of 
man's moral life : his reason, and this 
is perfected bv the moral virtue of pru- 
dence ; his will, which is disposed by 
justice ; his concupiscence, which is 
restrained by temperance; and his 
irascible appetite which is governed by 
the virtue of fortitude. 



280 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



Genuine virtue, moreover, connotes 
religion ; for virtues, writes St. Augus- 
tine, which are uninformed by religion, 
are but "splendid vices." And finally, 
in the present order of Providence, 
which is based upon the law founded 
and sanctioned by Christ, no virtue un- 
informed by Christianity can be accept- 
able to God or salutary in view of the 
supernatural destiny of man. 

Lecture Fifth 

To the moral obligation arising from 
the Natural Law, we trace the primitive 
source of all man's natural and even 
positive Rights. This links and subor- 
dinates the juridical to the moral order 
and justly founds the doctrine of Right 
upon the principles of Ethics. For 
Right, if we analyze it, aims, in the 
mind of the Supreme Ruler of the moral 
world, at the foundation of a just social 
order among men and at its maintenance 
amid the vicissitudes of human liberty. 
To this end, therefore, it endows the 
factors of society, both singly and 
collectively, with inviolable moral pow- 
ers to possess, enact, require whatever is 



ANALYTICAL INDEX. 



281 



due to the legitimate exercise and fulfill- 
ment of private and public duty. In its 
concept, accordingly, Right connotes 
Duty. 

Duty, in turn, is so involved in the 
moral order that all duty is to such 
an extent ethical in its basis, that there 
is no veritable duty where there is no 
moral obligation binding upon the Con- 
science. Moreover, from this reciprocity 
of Rights and Duties spring those jurid- 
ical relations, which govern man in his 
social environment and the sum of 
which constitutes the juridical order. 
This order, therefore, like the moral 
powers or Rights and Duties of which it 
is integrated has its root in the moral 
order. For its salient element is Right. 
Now every formal Right, in its native 
character of Right, that is, looked at 
from the standpoint of its irrefragable 
force and vigor, emanates in the end 
from, and subsists by, Divine Authority, 
whatever be its immediate origin or the 
proximate source from which it has, in 
its individual shape, received its def- 
inition and formation as a principle of 
conduct. 



282 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



Of its very nature, therefore, Right 
and the juridical order are essentially 
wound up with morality, and do 
not, therefore, subsist apart from the 
moral order, but, as a constitutive part 
of it, are embraced within the com- 
pass of that manifold natural obliga- 
tion, whose proximate basis is the 
Natural Law, and whose ultimate source 
is the Divine or Eternal Law. 

As a consequence of this ethical 
character of Right, that coercive inviol- 
ability, which is an essential note of 
every legitimate Right, so substantially 
subsists independently of any physical 
ability to efficaciously exercise its con- 
straining virtue, that any Right resting 
upon a sound title remains intact 
and in force, although by accident it 
becomes destitute of all private and 
physical support. 

In view, therefore, of its ethical origin 
and virtue, it is a fundamental miscon- 
ception, introduced by the atheistic 
Naturalism of Hobbes and Rosseau, to 
found Right in the Supreme Civil Power. 
Moreover, to set down with Kant " the 
law of equal freedom " as the basis of 



ANALYTICAL INDEX. 



283 



Right, is to divorce the law of a people 
from its morals, and is, in principle, 
Anarchism. 

The " Social Compact " theory, to 
which Grotius, Pufendorf, Austin, 
and, in his own sense, Herbart trace 
the source of Right, rests, like the doc- 
trine of Hobbes from which it springs, 
upon a materialistic concept of man's 
nature, a false origin of society, upon the 
Kantian postulate of personal liberty as 
an end in itself, and upon the promotion of 
this liberty as the principal object of the 
juridical order. 

As to the pantheistic principle of 
Right evolved by Hegel — that all Right 
is identical with the State, as the ulti- 
mate ethical evolution of the Absolute — 
while it may be popular with the 
Caesarists and with Statolaters, it leads 
to Socialism, and while it canonizes 
political despotism, it simply eliminates 
human liberty, and ignores the existence 
of moral obligation, religious and 
ecclesiastical Rights. 

All these theories of the origin of 
moral obligation assume that all Right 
is positive. Now, there are Natural 



284 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



Rights, remotely at least, underlying 
all Positive Rights, which, in themselves 
and independently of any and every 
positive ordination, are possessed of 
genuine juridical force, for the first 
principle of Natural Right — and in virtue 
of their necessary affinity, the ground- 
principle of Positive Rights is identical — 
may be formulated in this universal jurid- 
ical law : The right order of social 
existence must be maintained. This is a 
principle which is broader, deeper, more 
in accord with reason and nature, than 
the lay principle of an inviolable per- 
sonal liberty. It truly, therefore, sub- 
ordinates Positive to Natural Rights, the 
juridical to the moral order, and ulti- 
mately founds human Rights and Duties 
where these in the nature of things can 
alone be justly based, that is upon the 
principles of the Natural Law and the 
immutability and sanctity of the Eternal 
Law of God Himself. 



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